A Flora Hat

This is such a sweet hat. And a free pattern from tentenknits, it does need some tweaking to make it work out, but the colour chart is very easy to use.

Here are my notes for this hat if you decide to knit it:

Whatever you do, DO NOT cast on 120sts unless your head is the size of a basket ball! If you CO 120sts you will have to do 4 repeats of the pattern. CO 90sts then you get the 3 repeats. I used the larger needle size for the whole hat to get the right gauge on my yarn (which was Malabrigo Silky Merino). The only problem though is that now it’s quite tight on my head and the green yarn woven in behind now shows through and looks a little ugly. But 120sts was WAY to large. I think with 90sts, this would perfectly fit a 10 yr old. My 6 year old daughter loves it, the yarn is so soft, it’s a little big for her (especially in length), so we’ll share it. I have a small head. If I knit this again, I’d attempt it in 4ply or sport weight yarn and cast on 120sts.
I did garter st starting with a PURL round otherwise it looked all weird and I only did 5 rounds of garter st otherwise it doesn’t look like the hat picture from the designer.
Be careful doing the chart, the colours can be confusing if you’re doing white leaves.
If you’ve cast on 90sts instead, you need to start the decreases at the top of the hat at Round 5 instead of Rnd 1, (you won’t have enough sts otherwise). To make up for this, you’ll need to add some more knitting 'even' where it says to work 5 rounds even. I knitted 8 rows 'even' and it was just right for length. If you don’t add in extra decreases between rounds 7 and 11, you’ll end up with your decreases looking like a dog’s breakfast, (this goes for 90sts CO or 120Sts CO). So it should go like this:
Rnd 5: K8, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 6: (and every other round): Knit
Rnd 7: K7, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 9: K6, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 11: K5, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 13: K4, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 15: K3, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 17: K2, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 19: K1, k2tog, repeat to end of round
Rnd 21: K2tog around (10 stitches left)

I hope that helps someone.