The proper fit of a hat

I finished a hat over the weekend. I love the hat and my idea of doing it in self-striping yarn rather than using different colors for each stripe.  I'm not a picky knitter, so the fact that the stripes begin in different places doesn't bother me.  What's important is that each of the purl bumps are a different color.  And wow do they look great.

But I need to talk about proper fit of a hat.  This one is pretty neat in that you knit the brim side to side, graft it together, then pick up around the top edge and start knitting the body of the hat.  I like that because I could ensure that the hat would fit exactly right even though I'd substituted yarn.

I suspected that the yarn was slightly smaller than that suggested for the pattern, but my rows for the brim matched the rows for the pattern, and then once I'd picked up around the brim I had the same number of stitches.  The pattern calls for 3 repeats of the stripe pattern before starting to decrease for the crown...however...I did 5 because my head is bigger than the usual woman's head and because I didn't want this to look like a skull cap.

I probably should have done 7 repeats.  It still looks fine when I'm wearing it and it covers my ears (just barely) and when this hat is sitting off of my head all by its lonesome...it looks awfully small.  Like something that would fit a kid...and it probably would.

I do love it, though, and I finally got to use one of those special amazing buttons that my Aunt Janice bought for me a long long time ago.  I forget what kind of wood it is, but they are all stained different lovely colors and are shaped very interestingly.  This one matches the orange stripes towards the crown pretty well and helps to marry the break in the colorway that happens sometimes with Noro yarn.

So far this summer I've made a hat that was way too big--it's extremely slouchy, but that's ok.  I made this one which is too small.  I made one that I had to give to Alyssa because it was too small for my head.  Others have been just right but have gone to various other people who will enjoy them...and this one which is passable, but not perfect.  I was hoping for perfect because this is such a lovely pattern and a lovely hat.  I may have to make it again with more pattern repeats and give this hat to one of the daughters who fortunately didn't inherit my big noggin!