Owls knitalong: knitting in the round with DPNs

So I've finished the body section of the owls jumper and am just starting the sleeves using double pointed needles.

Front and back divided

When I first heard of DPNs I was quite scared of them. But after knitting my Miette cardi sleeves on them,  the fear factor was removed so I'm not sure I'll bother to learn the newer alternative Magic Loop method. Anyway, just wanted to share my experience and a great resource for those of you who are thinking of taking the plunge...

When I did my Miette sleeves, I was working top down and just had to transfer the top part of the sleeves from a circular needle to DPNs which was very straightforward. This time, however, the owls is worked bottom up and the sleeves are knitted separately and then joined and grafted onto the body. So there was a lot of head scratching (and maybe a bit of swearing...) when I tried to work out how on earth to cast on to DPNs. Luckily YouTube came to the rescue and I remembered this video from Gail that is excellent:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13W0z2FK-Zw

Transferring the cast on stitches between DPNs

Basically I followed her advice and cast all the stitches onto one DPN then just slipped them onto the other needles to distribute evenly. I feel a little bit cackhanded knitting with three needles rather than one circular but it really is quite simple when you get going.

Here is also another video that shows just the casting on method in a little bit more detail:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mcb9kR_7yT0

The start of my sleeves

Seriously, though, Gail's video is everything you ever need to know about knitting on DPNs, I'm not even going to try and show you myself as there is no point when a master can show you so clearly...

What it looks like side on

Go and watch it then you're ready to conquer the world of DPNs!

Oh yes, just one more little thing -  I was gobsmacked to discover that I now have 100 followers on Bloglovin' - so I'll leave you with this:

and this: