Am I unspeakably pleased with how the spacing on the top of this worked out? Why yes, yes I am.⁠

⁠Now, someone is out there wondering why I didn’t put the leafy bit over the whole hat. And the answer is that the hat would fit kind of weird if you ran that pattern over the whole thing.⁠

You’ve got a fairly dramatic difference in the number of stitches between the narrowest and widest rows of that stitch. Which is absolutely fine if you use it in a constrained space like this (where the stockinette on either side acts as a buffer), but can make things a bit lumpy over a large area like a whole hat.⁠

The other option would be to tweak things a bit so that the number of stitches stayed more constant row to row (which you totally could do on this one), but I sort of like the drama you get with the really big increases (the bottom of each leaf is a giant increase). It gives the leaves some texture and depth that I find charming. ⁠

So long as you use it in moderation!⁠

And don’t worry, I know that this is a fairly tall stitch repeat, so I have lovely, tidy, satisfying ways to do the crown at either the end or the midpoint of the repeat. But I am currently not sad at all about how this one is coming out!⁠

Nope. Not sad at all. ⁠