I’ve actually *just* as of September cancelled my Big Beanie Bag subscription, because I’m anticipating a busy fall and my projects have piled up to the point where I need a break. Still, I have managed to knit some of them up!
April’s Bag looked like this:

And here’s a photo summary of what I made with it:

Basically, I started casting on for the included pattern, realized I wanted to do something a bit more fancy with the yarn, and made up a new pattern on the spot with more colourwork and a shorter shaping. I’ve become a huge fan of having little hats that can live in my coat pockets so the pompom also had to go. This one became a present to my grandmother, since my Mom mentioned that she could also use a lighter fall pocket hat, and I thought the colours would suit her the minute I took them out of the bag. Such pretty heathers!

Yarn
The yarn is all Blue Sky Fibers Woolstok. I love the lightly heathered colours, and they were soft enough for hat use for my tastes. This was a great yarn to sample: gorgeous colours, nice to work with. I’m not sure if I’d go out of my way to find it again since I’m spoiled for choice in the Portland area, but it was definitely a treat to get it as a sample!
Pattern
This was pretty off-the-cuff and untested, but here’s a rough pattern:
Needle size: 8.
Pattern is in multiples of 8. If you need it bigger or smaller, add or subtract in multiples of 8.
(My head is 24 inches, for reference. Do a gauge swatch, calculate from there.)
Brim:
Cast on 104 (13×8) in the round using main colour.
Knit 1.5 inches of 1×1 twisted ribbing (it doesn’t have to be twisted, but I like the way it looks)
Knit 1.5 inches plus a few rows so the turned brim doesn’t cover the pattern of straight stockinette.
Colourwork:
Follow colour chart as below or written pattern:

MC-G = Main Colour (in this case, light grey)
CC-V = contrast colour one (in this case, dark violet)
CC-F = contrast colour two (in this case, fuchsia)
CC-P = contrast colour three (in this case, pink)
First band of colour is dark violet:
Row 1: {k3 in MC-G, k3 in CC-V, k2 in MC-G} repeat 13 times
Row 2: {k2 in MC-G, k2 in CC-v, k1 in MC-G, k2 in CC-v, k1 in MC-G} repeat
Row 3: {k1 in MC-G, k2 in CC-v, k3 in MC-G, k2 in CC-v} repeat
Second band of colour is fuchsia:
Row 4: {k3 in MC-g, k3 in CC-F, k2 in MC-G}
Row 5: {k1 in MC-G, k1 in CC-F} repeat
Row 6: repeat row 4. That is, {k3 in MC-g, k3 in CC-F, k2 in MC-G}
Third band of colour is pink:
Row 7: repeat row 3 only with pink in place of fuschia
Row 8: repeat row 2 with colour substitution
Row 9: repeat row 1 with colour substitution
Tie off colours and continue in main colour.
knit 1.5 inches of stockinette (or desired height for your head).
Decreases:
If you did more or less than 13×8 = 104 stitches at the beginning, you’ll need to adjust things accordingly. (e.g. if you did 12×8, you’ll start with a k11 instead of a k12)
Row 0: {k12, k2tog} repeat
Row 1: {k11, k2tog} repeat
Row 2: {k10, k2tog} repeat
and so on down until you get to a few stitches left and can tie them all together nicely.
Here’s a somewhat lousy picture of it on my head (before I blocked it, in case you’re wondering why it looks a bit wonky):

And post-blocking:

I gave this to my grandmother when I was out visiting in July, but I imagine she hasn’t had much chance to use it, so who knows if she’ll really like it! It was fun to knit, though, and I hope it’ll be useful to her as the weather cools.
Incidentally, I’m going to miss my yarn subscription: Jimmy Beans really did a nice job of giving me something new to try every month. But I was having trouble finding a few days to a week or so out of every month to actually do a new project. I imagine you’ll be seeing me write up random projects for quite some time before I run out of beanie bags, though, so taking some time off is the right choice even if I’m going to miss the new-yarn-every-month aspect. I did notice that Yarn Of the Month has a new owner and I’m tempted to try it out again, since 2 tiny balls of yarn for swatching is much easier to fit into my schedule, but I’m holding fast to taking a break for now. 🙂