First I wrote down what I wanted in my knitting journal then I charted out some designs on graph paper. I chose 6 peerie designs from the charts in Alice Starmore's Fair Isle book. I purposely did a 3 row design, 5 row design, then 4 row design and repeated this throughout (3 row chart, 5 row chart, 4 row chart, 3, 5, 4, 3, 5, 4).
The hat doesn't fit completely in the scanner so here is the main part. I used size 7 dpns and various worsted weight yarns from the stash - Paton's Classic Wool, Peruvian Highland Wool, and some Galway.
I wanted to bury the top decreases and at the same time make the charts (4, 6 and 8 stitch repeats) continue to match up at the end of the row as I decreased. This hat is for my friend Brad and I'm just sure he'll put it on backwards so it had to look good even at the end of the row.
The only thing I'd do differently would be to continue the striping all the way to the top of the ear flaps. I knew I'd be picking the earflap stitches up and knitting them with the K2P2 rib and was worried that any color other than the main color would show through on the purl stitches.
Well that was fun believe it or not. I'm actually looking forward to to designing a tam in the next week or two.