Pattern: Top-Down Ribbed Beanie Recipe, written to be used with any yarn/needle combination you wish. Sample shown uses Noro Kureyon yarn, colorway 164, (worsted/4/medium) and size US 6/4.00 mm double-pointed needles. You can choose whatever size yarn you want to use, and whatever size needles gives you the results you want. I like knitting this with double-pointed needles to start and continue with a circular needle; you can use a "magic loop" type technique with a single circular, or use two circular needles if that's what you like to do!
The Top-Down Ribbed Beanie Recipe is now available through Ravelry as a free PDF download. As of June 2009, the PDF is topdownbeanie_v2.pdf - I've changed the layout and rephrased some of the directions.