Cables

My knitting has been sadly neglected since before Christmas. But last weekend, with not much else going on, I picked up this project that I started way back in July--

An Irish hiking hat made from yarn I bought in Ireland and begun on the train from Dublin to Dingle. After starting and restarting (I always have to begin every knitting project at least three times!) a few times, and letting it languish for a few months, I finally came close to finishing last October when we were in Colorado.

But as I neared the end, I realized I was going to run out of yarn, so I frogged it and started again, using smaller needles and skipping the ribbing along the starting edge, but still I ran out of yarn. So I tore back to the beginning of the decreases and knitted it as a tube, thinking it might make a good neck warmer, but it was too scratchy for that (and also, it developed that weird conical shape...I think my kntting loosened up over time). 

So I ripped it back down to about half-size and made it an ear-warmer/headband (my friend from high school, Claudia, and I used to call these "flowerpots" because of the way our ponytails sticking out the top resembled potted plants).

I have four more skeins of this yarn (all in different colors, of course, so it's no good for making up for not enough yarn), my intention being to make each person in our family an Irish Hiking Hat. So now I need to figure out how to alter the pattern so that the yarn lasts to the tip of the hat. It's quite loose, so I think I can lose a good 16 stiches, but the question is, do I replace every other cable with a rib? Skip the ribs altogether? Or make a four-stitch-wide cable? Decision, decisions...