Oh, the hat dilemma

It's April now! So I can officially take some money and walk to the yarn store and try to distract myself from the giant crushing stressed-out sensation in my chest and buy myself yarn for a hat.

But which hat? It seems that hats are either flattering (a pretty beret, patterns with lace or an English driver's cap) or warm (a beanie, hugging the head), but not both. Now, if I were in Williamstown, and temperatures like the one that introduced me to my first "OMG, my hair just froze and broke!" horror came about, I would like a warm hat. So it seems like basically, I should knit a beanie-type hat, minimal lace, and maybe some colors to mix things up a bit.

So, problems: Knitty City had the softest chunky-alpaca had I've ever touched, and it made me want to steal the sample. (But I restrained my klepto tendencies). In design, it looked something like the Yarn Harlot's hat, but it was in sort of boring brown colors. The Yarn Harlot's hat:



Or I could knit a colorful hat, like this:


Pattern here: http://www.intheloopknitting.com/hat-chevron.php

or this:

Ravelry link here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/black-forest-hat

Votes? Chunky cabled alpaca in probably-boring-colors, chevron hat, lace-ish hat?

Edited to add: Okay, as of the time of this edit, I think I'm leaning towards knitting all three, starting with the second one because it's the easiest to knit (I've never knit cables before), and then graduating on to the others.

I mean, you never know when someone will want a hat.