2 Sleeves or Socks at once on Magic Loop

As a fairly new knitter I read all sorts of brilliant ideas out there in blog-land and think "that's a good idea!" Trouble is, it's an idea - not a darn tutorial. Someone out there said, "I knit both sleeves at once on a Magic Loop so my mistakes will be symmetrical." Brilliant! A method for planning for mistakes!

I'm thinking my LYS goddesses will teach me. Not only had they never heard of such a thing, they thought I was nuts. They are no longer goddesses. The 'net also failed. One lone spot discussed cuff down 2 socks on a single circ, but there were assumptions that I knew way more than I did.

I duked it out with my two balls of yarn and one circular needle and voila - here is my tutorial for novices!

1. Using a long tail cast on, cast on half the total stitches needed for the first sleeve. Make sure your tail is long enough for the TOTAL number of stitches for each sleeve.




2. Starting from the same end of the needle and from a second ball of yarn, cast on ALL of the stitches needed for the second sleeve





3. Divide 2nd sleeve stitches in half and pull out a loop of cable between them.






4. Cast on the second half of the stitches for sleeve one. Make sure the first stitch you cast on here is snug up against the last one from the first half









5. Now you have all of your stitches cast on for both sleeves and you are ready to join in the round






6. Join and knit sleeve #1 (green). You are only going to knit one side of the round - as you are knitting your stitches in exactly the order in which you cast them on.





7. After knitting side one of sleeve #1, be careful to switch balls of yarn and you move on to sleeve #2 and knit one full round on that sleeve





8. Finally, you come to the second half of sleeve. Switch balls of yarn once more and finish the round.





Remember, the order of stitches is
1. Sleeve #1, first half
2. Sleeve #2 whole thing
3. Sleeve #1, second half.
Don't forget to switch balls each time time you switch sleeve #'s