It was not difficult for me to sign up. I had to give some moments of thought to each step except the form application which I gave a couple moments of thought. I was kind of glad it wasn't instant-simple because I'd prefer thinking people be here.

That prolly sounds smackish but it's just my directness. I really didn't have any problems.

Many pets for the wee kid

Relay Pro. Stopped going.

What cast on are you using?
Edit: I think it might be the specific circumference. Because there's not enough give on the cast-on edge, having a wider circumference is going to be key perhaps. ?

For anyone wondering what we're talking about:

Creating a Folded Neckband https://youtu.be/RYyvunQzRNg

I spent part of the morning looking for stuff that made more sense to me. Turns out, Stephen West has some killer resources and two in particular help both you and I.

They are the first two vids in the playlist I'm creating here: Brioche Knitting

Seems to me that increase/decrease video is exactly what you (and I) need. Also turns out, I didn't screw it up last night. It just LOOKED screwed up. Too bad I ripped it out hahaha! I'm going to start over.

edited for paragraph layout.

I love piano cat. It reminds me of my mother's art and I can imagine whole stories involving piano cat and their buddy field mouse. Very fun. Thanks for being a smile to my face.

Brioche is new to me but I can say it is fun. How complicated it is to you is going to be a personal thing. For example, I can't really do lace because I cannot memorize the patterns so lace is very, very complicated for me.
This brioche is challenging, but in a good way. And once you truly learn it, that's it. You'll be able to do it moving forward unlike say, lace, where you'd still need to memorize each new pattern for every new project.

I do think Soundwaves is a good first brioche knit project. It's written very clearly and the project itself is direct and pretty simple in what he's having you make. It looks more complex than it is. Plus, it's good practice. And Stephen has good brioche tuts. That all said, I'm going to be moving on to Bixbite before being anywhere near finished Soundwaves because that was my goal from the start. Though now I'm a little nervous because I found an error in my Soundwaves this morning and was really at a loss on how it happened and how to fix it/move on. That is, I did move on but I wound up doing a decrease in order to do so. Don't let me scare you. This all sounds worse than it was.

Haha, I forgot to respond about the shawl. It's a three color shawl with different two-color brioche areas. It's this one: Bixbite Shawl which appears two-color but it's three-color.

It's a stunning shawl and I haven't given up completely yet. Learning the brioche is hard for me for some reason. I can't even guess why it's such a block, not that I think it's easy or anything. But I feel like I'm learning knitting all over again instead of just a few new stitches. It's bizarre.

I saw the shawl on Fraoc Knits vlog and fell in love. I had one skein already and bought more yarn that I don't want to use for anything else. We'll see how thing pans out.

Oh, the Rispen are beautiful! Good luck with it and let us know how it goes.

All I have are the YouTube videos that apply to the specific stitches that are in my pattern but I'll certainly let you know if anything of them help. I tend to like Andrea Mowry tuts and she has a whole playlist for brioche. That's where I'm starting. A main sticking point for me is getting them to stay in my head. I feel like I need to sit next to someone to learn this but I'll keep plugging.

I made some popcorn earlier to think about your dilemma. Crunching and thinking are a good combo for me. I kept thinking that, and I'm probably wrong, on a hat, you are binding it to more ribbing (maybe??) and so it was being attached to another stretchy fabric. Whereas binding it to stockinette stops it short of any further flexibility and the caston edge IS like steel really.

But if you were making a hat like a kep or other stockinette style, that theory goes right out the window.

Andrea Mowrey has a good provisional folded collar video. I'll edit this and link it here in a sec as I'm currently on my cell phone.

I hope a knitting master chimes in with the cause because this is going to bother me and I want to know the answer.

I'm learning brioche knitting by working on Stephen West's "Brioche Soundwaves" so I can make a Bixbite shawl. It's going well!

I'm also working on a Dreyma sweater and an Anthology Throw.

I'm reading a lot more too.

It does get better. Keep at it. There's an app called Smoke Free that did it for me. Icon is a green heart. I'm at 3 years, 3 months, 3 weeks. You got this.