Phase IV - starting the first sleeve and learning how to knit with dpn's

My next e-mail was sent off a few days later...
{ETA: Am not sure when I sent Wood Phase III, but here it is.}



"Ok, so here is Phase IV.



Listen up: I'm giving it to you on the condition that you wait until you are well-rested and have an hour or two of peace and un-interrupted quiet (stop laughing, I'm serious) to try it. Don't attempt this on an empty stomach or when you're PMSing or when you're nursing a 4-year-old who has caught H1N1 back to health. It won't work. You'll get frustrated and you'll decide that anyone stupid enough to try this deserves to be taken out of the gene pool. And, seeing as you've got my home address, I'd rather you didn't get to that point.

That said, it's quite do-able. No really, it is. I actually much prefer double-pointed needles to circulars, which I realize makes me an anomaly, but still. Just keep in mind that the needles (whether you're using 4 or 5) are going to dangle and clink and clang together while you knit. Totally normal. I tried to show you as best as I could how to do this, but I figured I would send you this link, if you need a YouTube video. She's not knitting in seed stitch, so just remember that. But, she's got a cool accent and her instructions are quite good (socks and kid sleeves are essentially the same - just tubes). She's using 4 needles, instead of 5 like me, so you can see the difference. Also, she is using a completely different cast on (see, I had no idea it even existed - you learn something everyday!):



I just realized you may be confused about why my yarn is now beige in the Phase IV tutorial. I started this tutorial with my yellow yarn last week, and was knitting along nicely until this weekend, when I picked it up again and realized that I had made a mistake and ripped it out to restart. I didn't have the laptop's webcam here and I got so carried away with the knitting that I went way beyond the point where I finished the tutorial and decided to just keep on going. So, I had to go back and re-document what I did, using a different yarn and set of needles (I didn't want to restart AGAIN and my needles and yarn were otherwise engaged). So, I'll get back to the yellow yarn and bamboo needles in the next installment. Make sense? Do you even care? Probably not. Oh well."

Here are Phases V and VI: