Still Working on New Pilgrim Hat

I have a new hat drying right now (on an upside-down votive candle for the shape) and will try to chain stitch a white area around the base, then add a chain-stitched buckle in gold and will see how that looks. It is A LOT bigger and this may not be a good thing! I will probably knit another a little smaller and see how that works.
The first hat was knit with two-strands of New Zealand 2-ply (dk weight) yarn held together and I cast on 36 stitches for the brim, working from the outside to the inside.
The second hat I used a Cascade very thick yarn (will have to check the label again) only one strand and cast on 48 stitches. This I think made the brim too wide and so I let it felt for a really long time, trying to shrink it more. It did become very sturdy! But I think it may still be too large, which tells me that 42 stitches probably would have been just right.
I'm sorry I didn't get to knit at all in the hospital yesterday while waiting for my Dad's surgery, as I thought I would. They kept moving us around from room to room, so I never could settle in and pull out all my stuff. I was going to start working on the pickle, which I will try to do tonight! The idea intrigues me, although my poor Rebecca doll lays forlornly on my dresser, quietly calling out to me, "I need arms and legs and clothes... I need arms and legs and clothes ... please don't forget about me!"
And to make matters worse, the pattern and yarn came in for the Lula doll!!! .... meanwhile, the playmat part of the Knitted Farmyard (which, by the way, is an incredible book) is still very bare, as I have only completed two corn fields and half a meadow in this giant landscape! I have enlisted Kent's help. He will now be the official yarn cutter, as I need TONS of different sizes of yarn cut for me to latch into the rug canvas. Once I get a rhythm going with latching pieces, I can run through a stack pretty quickly and I find it completely irritating to have to stop and measure and cut more.
Not to mention Alan Dart's Dickensian Mice, which I've started and his Knights, which I've almost started. (I say almost, as I needed the needles and had to take off the poor knight's foot and leg.) And of course, last (and certainly least), Randy's socks.
More later ...
More later ...