Ravelry users notes were very beneficial in knitting this pattern and I agreed that dropping stitches on the band was going to result in laddering down of those stitches and that’s not a look I wanted in this hat. I did the provisional cast on as shown on www.knitpurlhunter.com and cast on 162 stitches. After I knit the two rows of live stitches together I knit two rows of st. st. and then increased to 192 stitches. I did 70 rows of pattern and then followed the decrease instructions written by anleirer’s notes (thank you for that!) as they were much easier to read than the German translation to English. I’m very happy with the final project.