Nalbinding Project #6 -- Finnish Stitch hat/beanie/skullcap/basket

It's done for now.  I am out of the gray yarn. It's a little short for a beanie, so I guess it's in its skullcap phase.  It makes an entirely acceptable basket if flipped over, too.

I am going to move on to other projects but will probably return with some different yarn to make this hat a little deeper.

I think I already wrote about my many attempts to get a reasonably flat/slanted top.  It took me something like 4 tries to achieve an acceptable result.

1 - 16 (or maybe 17) stitches into the loop of a slip knot (where the loose end of the slip knot tightens the loop).  Pull tight.

2 - double the stitches

3 and 4 - 1 stitch, increase in next stitch

5 - 2 stitches, increase in next stitch

6 - 3 stitches, increase in next stitch

7 and beyond -- work even.

I probably could have increased somewhat fewer stitches on round 6, but this size is still adequate and should fit people with larger heads, too.  The center is a bit conical, but not excessively so, and will lie flat when the hat is flipped over.  The other increase rounds increase the size of the top without causing any potato-chipping.

I'm not sure what I'll do for the increase rounds for the next Finnish stitch hat I make.

Finnish stitch is very pleasing to me.  I enjoy doing it and I like how it looks.  It seems denser than Oslo stitch, probably because it is a 2+2 stitch instead of a 1+1 stitch.  I did an F1 connector stitch because I liked how it looked.

My first Oslo stitch hat was done with thick yarn and this one is done with worsted weight, but wow, look at the difference in gauge/density.

I will probably return to doing little Oslo stitch projects, to make sure I'm ready to teach this to other even newbier newbies in a few weeks.

Doing other stitches is a lot of fun, though, so I expect to resume my explorations soon enough.  There are so many interesting things to explore, so many stitch families and historic concepts and variations on a theme, etc.

A couple of things I've vaguely bookmarked in my brain -- would it be at all interesting to play around with stacked increases and decreases?  And relatedly, can one make lace-like eyelet patterns by careful arrangements of foundation chains (that aren't connected to the round below)?

Something I find kind of fun about nalbinding is how you can simply stop a project and not worry about a clean finished edge or casting off or anything.  And then you can simply resume from where you were as if you'd merely stepped away for a minute.