This was fun and easy to make. I used the glacier and the white with the metallic threads -celebration? Love the wintery color combo. I'm not sure if I did the decreases correctly, but this is a forgiving pattern and it is easy to go back and correct if you make a mistake.

The one thing that made me give it a 4 instead of a 5 is that it is very small, even on my smallish noggin. My gauge might have been a bit tight in the beginning, but this pattern could really use two more rows of ribbing at the bottom, and I am going to knit the first round of stockinette in the main color, before starting the snowflake, so the bottom points don't get lost in the ribbing.

The contrast yarn (snowflake) is carried all the way around inside the hat and really bulks it up, making it quite a bit tighter than the band, and the hat just turns out really short. I am planning on giving this to my six-year-old neighbor. Her eyes exactly match the glacier yarn.

I am going to try this again, knitting FOUR rows of ribbing instead of two, and I am going to knit it on a size 11 circular needle, since I like the bottom of a hat to not be loose. I will switch to the called for needle (13) at the first row of stockinette (added by me in only the main color) and knit as loosely as I can to accommodate the double thickness of yarn. I think this will solve the tightness/shortness problem.

One more tip: I could only find a size 13 circular needle, so when I got to too many decreases to knit on the circular needle, I slid all the stitches off onto smaller double pointed needles and knitted onto the circular needle. I slid them off after each round as there were only 20 or so at that point, and while not the most convenient, it wasn't that big of a deal.