Evolution: Hat

I have lots of ideas in mind for a summer beanie or tam beret, so I decided to start something up and see if I could get it to look like one of my ideas. For me (and probably many), crochet projects are always trial-n-error because I have no patience for a pattern, and I want my project to be original anyways.

So, long story boring, I started up a tam beret in Central Park one of the days it wasn't downpouring in this NYC (side note: one thing you CANNOT crochet is an umbrella). For those of us who forgot what sunshine looks like, here is a pic from that day:

It took me a while to get the increases looking right. I think I decreased then too much on each row, and I ended up making the beret too tight. Plus I think there is too much ribbing, and it is an awkward balance to the pattern of the back. Below is the tam beret that I speak of, in my favoritest of colors! The ribbing is front and back post stitches, and those stitches are b*tches. Very time consuming and tricky, but very cool looking. The rest of the beret is what I call a star pattern. It's a lot of dch and ch2 intersecting. So to me beautiful green color tam beret is the first stage of evolution: hat.

Stage two of evolution: hat was to start an entirely new hat based on my first attempt. The inital sizing and the stitches were good. I started hat two on a 3 hr flight to Dallas, and I finished it on the 3 hr flight home. When I got home I saw that, like hat 1, the ribbing started waaay too soon. I wanted this hat to be much more slouchy, but it was very snug. I don't mean that it was tight around my head like hat 1, because it was not (part of hat evolution!), it was just snug to the back of my head.

The second pic below is me working on several more rows of star pattern after taking out 3 hrs worth of FP/BP ribbing. ARGH!

Stay tuned. I nearly finished the hat. It took three phases of evolution, which I don't think is that many, and plus I have a good base for the other ideas I had. BONUS! Since I wrote down this pattern I can post it here, and replicate it for sale on my empty Etsy shop!