Christmas knitting - Thorpe hat

Since we had no power and no guests for Christmas, I asked my oldest son if he would like me to knit a hat for him (after all, I've made hats for everyone else more recently than the last one that I had knit for him), and what kind. He held up his brother's fairisle earflap hat (purchased), and told me "like this". Luckily I had printed out a free pattern from Through the Loops, called Thorpe (look in the sidebar), which had both plain and pattern designs, so we looked through my yarn stash and found a yarn I thought might work.

The gauge for the yarn I'm using is a bit smaller than the pattern requires, so I thought about starting with one size larger needles, but couldn't find double pointed in the correct size, so started with the size on the pattern. I love the design, but it's coming out too small, and of course we can't go out to purchase the correct size, so last night I considered adding columns to the pattern, but have now decided to just go ahead and start over with needles that are two sizes larger and see how it works out. If it's too large, I'll just have to wait until I can shop for the right size when the weather improves. At least I love the pattern, which is working out very nicely, especially since I done almost no fairisle work.