Hat and a pattern too

I started working on this hat last Friday while avoiding traffic at a coffee shop. I was using what I thought was a perfectly good pattern. Steven and I headed over to play games, and I continued knitting. Obviously paying slightly less attention. I screwed up. I ripped it back to the ribbing rather than figure out how. I screwed up again. In the same spot. Thinking there might be an issue with the pattern, I put it away.

A few days later I got back to it. There were two versions of the pattern. But, that didn't answer my problem, they were still logically equivalent. The hat itself is a basic stitch, so I started googling to see how it was written elsewhere. I found another pattern for almost an identical hat. This pattern was overly verbose, but seemed to work. 

Then I got to the decreases. I have no idea what the second pattern was thinking. They made no sense and looked terrible. It was like they were almost done and just abandoned the pattern. I went back to the first pattern. Those decreases made a little more sense, but there were more errors. I just did my own thing instead. 

So this is what I ended up with. I wrote what I did in a new pattern. I have no idea what the legal rules are for fixing two broken patterns into a workable pattern. Both of the originals were free, and I'm not selling this one. But, it is a known pattern stitch away, so nothing was really unique to begin with. 

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