Block busted

I finally knuckled down and pulled back the heel yesterday, then reknit it, turned it, and got back on to the plain old stockinette just in time for book club this evening. I feel nifty.

I wish I'd taken a picture but it's been a nutty week and when I looked up from the sock it was after 10:30!

Happily my Yarnmarket order will be arriving this evening, so if I finish the first sock, I can cast on the second.

One thing I am a little concerned about, though...I think I made the heel flap too long somehow. I did lose count of my rows and had to go back and count them again...maybe I counted wrong and did too many? Or it could just be that my small feet needed a shorter flap than the standard...or that I went too far on the bit before the heel...I'm really not sure. I'm hoping that once I get far enough into the stockinette portion, that area will tighten up. It looks like it might...but I'm just not sure.

I also feel like I am stretching the sock out when I put it on, but I am not sure how much of this is real and how much of it is imagination. We'll see. I wish my cast-on was a little looser so I could pull the sock up a bit more. Will I never learn this lesson??

We'll see how it comes out I guess. I am glad now that I did the pair for me before another gift pair. This is definately a learning experience. Also, I am still not very good at picking up the stitches for the guesset. Everybody says 'pick up stitches' like it should be obvious, but I cannot seem to find clear instructions with pictures (preferably not a video, but step by step photos) to tell me how to do this. Clearly, I am just, you know..."slow."