Joining in with Entrelac

I've seen a lot of mentions of entrelac lately, so I thought I would try it. It does look harder than it is. The hardest part was in the initial picking up of stitches on the purl side of one of the squares. I realized I had been picking up stitches in a certain way, so that it always seemed to show up as purl stitches on the right side of the fabric. I had to play around with it a little, but once I got that, it worked out. The other thing was finding the right yarn. I tried Rowan Tapestry, but it didn't stripe as much as I wanted, and looked too much like just brown. It looks good on the ball, but then the color hardly changes. It is really soft, being part soy and part wool, so I'll have do something else with it. I ended up using Noro Silk Garden lite, which is a lot better. It's soft and the color changes are noticeable, but still a little subtle. I don't want to look like a clown. Now, the only thing is getting more of it, since it's fairly expensive.

Gigantic Sock

I got a bunch of Mission Falls cotton on ebay for a really cheap price, so I started Mesilla. The start is different than I thought it would be, since it doesn't start in the round, even though it is top down. It's kind of hard to picture how it's going to come together, but I think once I start working in the round, it'll be more clear. I'm using the sea color, and I got enough so that I might also make a shrug from Interweave, which used this yarn.
I also finished the heel for the Baudelaire socks, and it's too big. It was fitting okay, if slightly loose, until the heel was done and now it's an inch or more too long. I think I might have to start over and redo it in a smaller size. I don't want to, but I kind of figured this might happen. I never can just do a technique or pattern I've never done before, and have it turn out perfectly. Maybe now it will be easier, since I know what's coming, when I make the second one.

Writing Progress

I started doing the Nanowrimo again this year, and again I'm far behind this time. I wanted to be ahead, so I didn't have to keep writing ten pages in one day, but that didn't happen. I have an outline of my story, but it's hard to turn that into actual events or dialogue. I tend to just follow my character around, like now she's walking out the door, now she's walking down the street, and now she enters the store, and so on. It's boring to write, but it's hard to know how to move the events along so it makes sense. It makes you see fiction in a different way, instead of as a reader, just following everything along. I've read a lot of books, so it seems as if it would be easy, but writing makes you think of the construction of the story differently. I hope I can finish it, because it is good when the plot kind of takes over, and I see relationships between the characters that weren't there before.
On the knitting front, I'm to the point where the heel shaping starts on the Baudelaire socks. I guess the whole heel shaping part is the difficult part of socks, so I'll see how that goes. I'm still working on everything else, and it seems like it's taking forever. I have about three or fours projects going that are on size 3 needles, so it seems like I keep knitting and never make much progress. Once these are all done, I think it might start a project with thicker yarns.

Fall Star Quilt

I recently finished my second quilt. The star squares were originally supposed to go on the outside of a center area, but it didn't look right. I had the black leaf fabric and realized that the squares would look a lot better against that instead. One thing I didn't do right was on the back fabric. I cut it too small, so I thought I would put in a binding and cover up all the extra space. I had left about four inches between the front and the back all around. I had already started quilting and had to rip out all those seams along the edge, and attach extra fabric to the back in strips. The whole thing was tedious, but it doesn't seem to show. So next time I know not to do that. Other than that, I like how this turned out. The fabric was a lot smoother and didn't bunch up during the quilting process, unlike my first quilt. I still want to quilt around some of the stars in the center, because it seems to make the quilt lay more flat. The whole thing seemed to go a lot more smoothly, compared to my first quilt. I have some Halloween themed fabric, so I was thinking about using that for my next quilt.