Back and forth...back and forth

I turned the heel on my sock last night! Unfortunately, I also discovered that I did the heel flap wrong - In the style of stockinette, I was *sl1-k1* on one row, then I was *sl1-p1* {don't you just love how knitting uses regular expressions in the directions? Ahh. I love it when a good geekiness comes together} Unfortunately, the devil in the details and on the purl row, I was suppsoed to sl1-purl across. Doh! Made for a VERY TIGHT heel flap, and it was too tight to pick up the stitches for the gusset. You know I was going to try to avoid frogging it, right? The real directions are much more manageable, and now I understand the "turning the heel" concept. I was so excited that I knit a corner that I ran over to show DH. He, the architect, was suitably impressed.

I'm having technical difficulties in Clapotis. This knit-through-back-loop is getting me. All of my knit stitches are through the back loop. My knit stitch looks like this. From the other pictures that I've found of Knit through the back loop, which looks suspiciously like my normal knitting, it seems that my default stitch state is twisted. This is a little depressing, but even more so, is I'm having trouble figuring out how to make "untwisted" stitches. I may have to break down and knit a swatch and do some expirimenting with other strategies. I wish that the Clapotis pattern was written in the style of a for loop vs. line-by-line. I have so much trouble following that sort of thing. I want it to be:
k = 1
i = 4
while i <= 17 //i == number of stitches on needle.
if( odd(i)) //purl side of stockinette
{
sl 1, purl across to i-1, pfb stitch i
}
else //knit side of stockinette
{
sl1, for( j = 2; j < (i/2 - 1); j++) knit stitch j, ktbl, knit 1, ktbl, knit k stitches, kfb;
k ++;
}

After all of this whining and carrying on, I might be saying that I might not be really ready to try clapotis yet. I tend to have more trouble with patterns where you have to know exactly what line you're on (No lace for me yet, thankyouverymuch), and then that twisted stitch business. If anyone out there has any free advice on the knit-through-back-of-loop, I'll take it.

I started a new garter stitch blanket at the all-hands meeting this morning. It impressed my coworker, who it seems I often sit and knit near at meetings. I started from nothing and have a triangle as deep as my index finger now. That chenille. I'm having issues with it. For one thing, it's not much fun to knit, for another, it's hard to justify giving it to a charity (or anyone else in my circle) when it doesn't seem to be machine washable. So I brought in some Caron simply soft in a navy blue that I'd been thinking about for a Project Linus project because (a) I have a ton of it and (b) it really is very soft. I really like how the blankey is starting out, so that's good.