A Much More Masculine Hat

After I made my hat with the brim I wanted to try making another, but I didn't need another brimmed hat. I talked my boyfriend into letting me make one for him. We went pattern shopping on the internet and were pretty disappointed in what we found, nothing was like the hat I had proposed to him.  I could see the hat I wanted to make him in my head, so I started designing my own pattern. I started with the cast on from the pattern for my hat and altered it from there.  I let my boyfriend make a lot of the pattern choices, so this is truly a man's hat.

Materials:
210 yds worsted weight yarn, I used 100% wool
US 8 circular needles
US 8 dp needles
stitch marker(s)
piece of plastic for the brim, I used the other side of the cool whip container I used for my hat

Gauge: 18sts=4in
Abbreviations:
 k-knit
 p-purl
 K2 tog-knit two together
P2 tog- purl two together

Hat:
Cast on 96 stitches, place a marker at the beginning of the round and join being careful not to twist stitches. K2 p2 around, continue until hat measures 11.5 inches. ( I asked my bf if he wanted just the cuff to be ribbed, and the rest of the hat straight knitting, but he wanted ribbing all the way up. If you want just the cuff to be ribbed and the rest stockinette stitch, rib about 3 inches and then start stockinette stitch.)
Decrease:
Round 1: K2 tog P2 tog around
Round 2 and 3: k1 p1
Round 4: K2 tog
Round 5: k around
Round 6: K2 tog

Cut yarn leaving a tail, thread through remaining stitches, bring to the wrong side, pull tight, and weave in ends.
Brim:
I wanted the brim to be longer and more like that of a baseball hat than the way it turned out on my hat so I changed up the start of the short rows and how many rows there are between the short rows and the decrease rows.

Cast on 40 sts, knit is stockinette stitch. Start short rows on right side row 4 (as in the fourth row total, not the fourth of the right side rows).
Row 1: knit 25, turn
Row 2: slip 1 p12 turn
Row 3: slip 1 k15 turn
Row 4 slip 1 p18 turn
Continue to work in this manner, working three more stitches at the center each row until all 40 stitches have been worked. Work eight rows in stockinette stitch. Starting on a right side row bind of 2 sts, repeat 9 times (ten rows total 20 sts). Bind off 3 sts at the beginning of next four rows, 8 sts remain, bind off.
For some helpful tips on short rows and wrapping look here and here

Brim Assembly:
*note some pictures are from the assembly of the brim for my hat hence the different yarn color.

So step one fold the brim in half:

 I pinned the brim on a piece of paper and traced it before I took it to the cool whip container. Be sure to actually stretch your knitting when you pin it, you don't want your knitting to sag when you sew it around the brim. This is the tracing I got:

 I took the shaky outline and drew a smoother one just inside it small enough that the yarn would be able to be sewn over it. I cut out on the smooth line, folded it in half and trimmed it to make it symmetrical. Then I pined it to the cool whip container.

I traced my paper shape with sharpie

I'm pretty handy with knives and have had several art classes that relate to carving things, so I just carved this out with a box cutter. If you're not so steady of hand or experienced with knives I'd recommend scissors.

On my hat I could see a bit of the white from the plastic showing through my knitting so I covered the brim with electrical tape.

I used some stitch markers to pin my knitting around the hat brim

I used the tail from knitting it and started in the middle with a whip stitch. Here's the brim halfway sewn up

Unfortunately when I cast on I did not leave a long enough tail to sew up the other half of the brim, so I had to add an extra piece of yarn to do the other side.

This is the brim of my hat

Here's the brim of my boyfriend's hat, as you can see it's a good bit longer than mine.

The next step is pinning on the brim while that hat is on the wearer's head. My boyfriend loved this part, especially because it interfered with him watching the NFL draft.

He loves me enough, that with a few reservations he allowed me to sew the brim on while it was on his head.  The only problem that can about was that he kept futzing with the hat while I was sewing and it didn't quite come out like I had imagined (I wanted the bottom edge of the brim on the hat not on his forehead).

 At his request I tacked up the folded edge of the hat. Also note that the weird bulge at the back of the hat is because my curly haired boyfriend needs a haircut, not because my pattern does something weird.