Adventures in Double Knitting

I have been thinking for some time about getting one of the knitting boards from LionBrand. Unfortunately, there isn't a reliable link to a picture of it on the site, so I can't post it here. It's basically an oval board with a hole in the middle and a lot of pegs. One of the reasons I haven't purchased one is that I have a number of round Nifty Knitters, and while they're useful for some things, especially for getting the kids to knit, you can't vary the gauge much except by adding thicknesses of yarn. However, I have been thinking that there must be a way to do this double-sided knitting thing without spending money on a knitting board that I'm not likely to use all that often. Finally, it occurred to me that there have to be instructions on the Web somewhere. It is an unfortunate truth that these little epiphanies usually happen when I'm nowhere near a computer, so it has taken until today for me to get around to surfing for instructions. Thankfully, my search led me to this little gem. RedThread's excellent instructions on this topic are clear and concise and include pictures that are, of course, far neater than mine:

This is my youngest, after putting the extra DPN's between his fingers like a wood-knuckled Wolverine and spearing the yarn. This pic is a bit neater:

Note my feline assistants in the background, napping. They're all tuckered out from jumping on my little work table and grabbing at the yarn. This pic was taken after retrieving all the DPN's they sent rolling across the floor.

Naturally, even after my feline assistants fell asleep, I messed up early on:

Despite my momentary compulsion to undo the entire row and fix it, with a nod to Athene, I just left it alone. After all, I figured I'd make plenty more errors to keep that one company.

Ultimately, the chart I made was not a good fit for this project:

It's supposed to be a leaf, and on paper it looks vaguely leaf-like. While knitting, however, it became rather less leaf-like and more cat-like, especially since I miscounted the rows (in my defense, this was knitted partly at home and partly at the doctor's office we took my youngest to). After adding some ears, it became less cat-like and more like some sort of fancy slug, although my youngest assures me it's still cat-like. Okay, perhaps I've knitted a Rorschach test, but it'll still make a good potholder:

This is my youngest again, modeling the new potholder in a frame he built from the yarn and needles I was using: there are two more needles behind the potholder and the fifth is stuck between the spools of yarn, apparently to keep them from escaping the box. Well, at least the cats can't reach them now.