I recently finished mine too!



I had some problems with the last stitch in the cable being very baggy, so I went through and tightened them up by gently tugging on the surrounding stitches.  later on in the hat, I tried knitting the last cable stitch through the back loop (k tbl) and that seemed to help quite a bit, so I think I'll be doing that in the future.

I think I did something funny with my ribbing... on the other pictures I've seen, it lines up nicely with the cables.  mine's all over the place.  ah well.

I made a few modifications to this hat.  I like long hats that completely cover my ears, so I added three rows of ribbing to the bottom... and then after reading this thread, I added two repeats of the cable pattern before I started decreasing.  looking back, I could have just done two extra cable repeats and not added more ribbing, but it's still a good length for me so I'm happy. 

I used KnitPicks Andean Silk in Cranberry - one complete ball and then a little bit of another.  I also used my new Denise needles for the majority of the hat - size 7 and 8 - and I'm very pleased with them.