I knit this pretty much as written although I was worried I would run out of yarn so I did less rows of the ribbing (which I used k2, p2 instead). I think another leaf repeat would have been good for a more slouchy hat however I might have run out of yarn. I did make a few mistakes with the cabling that I didn’t fix. I placed stitch markers to help remember which cable cross to do.
Also on my blog (linking system won’t work)here.