The Infamous Heel Turn...

Hello once again, I come to you with an update on my first pair of socks. To me, socks were always what knitting was about-unforgiving, precise, challenging. This project has been an interesting adventure and I have learned a great deal about knitting from these.
Of course, there's the skills learned. I've never worked with such tiny needles or yarn before, and that in itself was an adventure. Even in crochet, I've never worked with such small yarn, and I'm decently advanced in that craft.
Secondly, in this project I have ripped out my work several times, fully dropped stitches (LADDERS AHHHH), and learned to pick it all up. A tiny little crochet hook has been at my side throughout working on these so far, and has been indispensable. I've ripped out my needle to rip back before on other projects, but never like this. Never with such tiny yarn that makes such tiny loops and which makes it ever-so-difficult to secure dropped stitches and get them back on the needles.
Thirdly, picking up stitches. I'd never done that before, and after I put down my needles for a few days because of the next learning challenge I'll discuss, I actually let this sock sit there for a week before attempting it. With a little help from my personal knitting teacher (my mom), I picked up those stitches and it wasn't a big deal.
And now ladies and gentlemen, the fourth skill learned and perhaps the most intimidating one...
*drum roll please*

The heel turn! I've read about how once you turn your first heel, it changes you. I'm still not quite sure HOW it happened, how those decreases lined up to create the heel. But it worked! Like magic. It totally worked. And it wasn't that difficult. Even though I'm only on the first sock I've even done it twice now. (*cough*...the first time I had to rip it all out because I read the directions for the wrong size, oops...) Anyway, I'm definitely much more confident about my knitting abilities and I now have greater faith in just following a pattern and watching the knitting develop without exactly knowing how it works. 

In addition to working on this sock, I'm about halfway through the pillow I mentioned in my last post. Here's a somewhat out of focus picture, my apologies:

I've finished the pink squares, and now I am up to the purple ones, as you can see. There will be two pink squares and two purple squares on each side. As you can see, I'll also be arranging them so that some squares have the ridges horizontally while others are vertical. 

These are done with wool ease thick n quick, with size 10.5 needles. I casted on 17 stitches (6 inches across) and worked for about 34-35 rows until it measured 6 inches. The pillow will be 12 by 12 inches. I'm not sure how I'm going to stuff it just yet, I don't have faith that the stitches are tight enough for stuffing to not come out of it (although 10.5 was the tightest needle size I could stand with this yarn), so I may go craft-store searching for a 12 by 12 pillow insert. Anyone know if they even make those? I'll have to google it.

Also, I just want to say once again, that I love these denise needles needles. They have become my go-to needles for projects, even ones NOT worked circularly. They are so easy to use and feel good in my hands.

However, for science's sake (okay, really, because of my knitting tools obsession), I have something else in the mail...