Thu 22 Nov, 2012:
I have now made 7 or 8 of these and am using the cast-on suggested in the pattern and magic-loop.

Thu 15 Nove 2012:
Needed to go down from a 3 mm needle to a 2.5 mm needle to get anything approximating gauge.

Used my variation upon Judy’s Magic Cast On (where I don’t need to knit tbl at all - I should really write that up - I worked it out months ago, maybe years) instead of the cast-on in the pattern - that way I have all of the stitches cast on at the start (and put half on waste yarn for the second half of the star).

Used magic-loop for the first half of the first star but need to buy a second set of DPNs for the second half of the star - it is not possible to knit a pattern for a five pointed star with only five DPNs. You need six, it seems. So I used a 40 cm circ as a sixth dpn which seems to have worked.

So then I decided (after row 4 on the second side of the first star) to use my 40cm 2.5mm circ and my 60 cm 2.5 mm circ to knit the star using two circs in a similar way to how you would knit a sock on two circs (learning this method as I went along, of course!). I am not sure whether this would work for the setup row or not because having three points on one circ (and two on the shorter circ) is a little tricky.

The cdd (centred double decrease) stitches are a lot easier on circs than dpns. I will try this method on the second (and all subsequent?) star(s) on all rows. I do think that this would be even easier with two 40 cm circs, though.

Now at row 8, it also seems a lot easier to stuff on circs!

First star finished!