01-30-2022

Starting notes: Intending to make a skullcap/beanie style of hat.
Stitch type: Finnish
Starting from: Closed end of the piece
Needle Used: Medium Elk Cannonbone (Lower Leg Bone) nalbinding needle from Mikhail Novgorodets (MKA Michael Suggs)
Historical Guidelines: 15 start, increase in each stitch on first iteration of spiral, increase every other on second, every third on third etc…

01-31-2022

Tried to move past the initial ring of stitches yesterday, but royally mucked it up and got confused. Setting that yarn aside for the moment, I’m going to try once again with fresh yarn from the skein, and see if I can get the hang of it. I’ll undo the yarn from attempt 1 at a later date for use in this project.

01-31-2022

My second attempt at the round start worked! I took it very slow, and paid close attention to where the last stitches were actually resting in the work.

I began with 15 stitches in the loop, increased on every stitch in the first iteration of the spiral, and am going to increase on every other stitch in the next iteration… Assuming I can keep track and count!

02-02-2022

Tried my first yarn join yesterday (after carefully undoing the yarn I first tried to start with), I attempted the technique that Ylva the Red specified in their video, essentially felting the plied wool yarn. It… did not go exactly great, and it was a bit precarious and certainly not visually consistent, but it seems to at least be holding. Doing some research and reading today, and I come across this post… where it mentions that superwash yarn is difficult to felt! durrrr hurr.

I’ll need to do some looking into which yarns are best, and really pay attention to the details moving forward.

In the meantime for this project… Apparently, a good alternative is the Russian join or the spit splice, so I shall look into those for the next join.

02-03-2022

LOL apparently this is not York stitch at all. It is the Finnish Stitch. oops… Updated project details to reflect that. Derp!

02-07-2022

This past weekend gave me the chance to make some solid progress. I’m getting better at the Russian join, and will definitely keep better track of my stitch count moving forward! I need to get something better than just paperclips.

02-22-2022

I got some stitch markers! They make everything so much easier.

Finally beginning to stop the constant increases. I fear that ten iterations’ worth of increases may have been too many… we’ll see how everything shapes up. This iteration is 10 increases over the span of the 15 sections. Next will be 5 increases over the span. Then I’ll go ahead and do no increasing. Hopefully this will work out.

03-03-2022

I was not thinking last week when I was nalbinding after work, and I forgot to determine whether or not I should actively decrease (as in, grab more stitches than just the 2+2), and now I am vaguely dissatisfied with myself and the project, and pondering whether or not to rip out stitches and re-do, or continue on. Have yet to decide.

03-03-2022

Ok, I drew it out, and yeah. I’ll need to go back and un-do stitches, so that I can do a bit of decreasing in a way that won’t confuse me later. Grump.

03-07-2022

It was smart to un-do the stitches, but uuuughhhhh. Calculate/count/check twice, stitch once, indeed. Might have to toss the yarn that I un-stitched because it became too un-spun, we will see if I can salvage it at all… my hopes are not high for it.

Did the proper decreasing, I think, for most of it; might have lost track when I was nalbinding as an attempt to get past a spout of academic/work burnout. But, decreased, and then worked in the round for a number of iterations. I decreased again by fifteen stitches after that, and am working in the round again without any increases/decreases; hopefully it will only take two or three more iterations for it to fit!

I need to look up a video on the nalbinding equivalent of casting off/working in the beginning tail…

03-11-2022

Finally finished it yesterday evening! I’m pretty satisfied with how it turned out.

I used this video to end the brim, it turned out… meh. Definitely need more practice there.

Used the darning needle to weave in and tie up the loose ends at the open and closed ends of the piece. No particular method used.

Guidelines/What I did

Shareable/Printable version here

Since nalbinding stitches are not of a consistent gauge from person to person, this is more of a guideline than a follow-to-the-exact-letter pattern. There was a lot of trying-on as I worked the piece up to size.

Legend:
. single stitch
^ increase
v decrease

Closed-end start, 15 stitches/sections

. (1 stitch) x15
^ (2 stitches) x15
.^ (3 stitches) x15
..^ (4 stitches) x15
…^ (5 stitches) x15
….^ (6 stitches) x15
…..^ (7 stitches) x15
……^ (8 stitches) x15
…….^ (9 stitches) x15
……..^ (10 stitches) x15

now group sections by 3, into 5 groups total, and do the following:

………^ (11 stitches) | ………. (10 stitches) | ………^ (11 stitches) x5
………v (10 stitches) | ………^ (11 stitches) | ………v (10 stitches) x5
………. (10 stitches) | ………v (10 stitches) | ………. (10 stitches) x5

back to individual sections, no more increases/decreases

………. (10 stitches) x15

One difference is that I did decrease from 10 stitches to 9 per section after a while when I was reaching closer to the brim, I did not keep track of where/when precisely. I am not 100% sure I would do so again, hence the pattern modification.