I’ve said this before (oh so very many times), but you should block your knitting.

Look how much better this hat is after I blocked it.

The stitches are smoother and more even.  The decreases lay down flat.  The top is nice and round and noticably less reminiscent of a screwdriver.  It’s just better.

And no, it’s not hard.  Get it wet, get it into the shape you want it to hold, let it dry.  That’s really all blocking is (there’s more in depth info over here, and even more if you put ‘blocking’ into the search bar on the blog, I have seriously been giving this particular speech for years and years and years).  But really, think of blocking more as ‘drying in the right shape’ and less as ‘weird scary magic trick’ and you’ll be less intimidated and more likely to do it (and your knitting will be much nicer all of a sudden).

You spent fifteen hours knitting the thing, you can spend five minutes blocking it.  It’s worth it.