Baby Sock - after turning the heel

I’m a little stuck on my first sock attempt. I’m working on “Super Quick Baby Socks”, pattern here

I’ve knitted the ribbing and the heel flap, and turned the heel with no problems at all. That all looks really nice. But the problems I’m having are here:

With RS facing, and using the heel flap needle (needle 1), pick up 8 stitches along the side of the heel flap. With an empty needle, knit across stitches fo next two needles so the 12 instep stitches are now on one needle. (needle 2) With empty needle, (now needle 3), pick up 8 stitches along other side of heel flap, and knit 3 stitches from needle 1. You should now have your stitches distributed as follows: Needle 1 - 11 stitches, needle 2 - 12 stitches, needle 3 - 11 stitches.

So, first of all, on which side am I supposed to start picking up stitches? Regardless of what I do, my working yarn is in the wrong place to knit the “instep stitches”, which I’m assuming are the stitches on the two needles that are not holding my heel flap. Am I supposed to be picking up and knitting the stitches on the side of the heel flap? Am I supposed to break the yarn? The pattern doesn’t say to do either.

Second problem – I don’t have 8 stitches to pick up! For the heel, all the edge stitches are slipped on one row and knit on the next so there are only half as many edge stitches as rows, know what I mean? Maybe I didn’t knit enough rows before I started turning the heel? The pattern didn’t specify a number of rows, so I just did a few…it looked fine, distance-wise, from the ribbing to the bottom of the heel. Do I need to frog this and knit more rows before I start turning the heel?

Sorry this is so long. I hope my questions make sense. I was so proud of myself for turning that heel and then I get stuck on the picking up stitches – that’s supposed to be the easy part! I guess that’s what I get for feeling cocky!

Your heel flap should be almost square – for example if it’s 20 stitches wide, it shouldbe 18 rows tall. If you didn’t come close to knitting a square flap, you 'll probably have trouble picking up the gusset stitches.

Have you looked at the pictures in Silver’s Sock Class? I know the pattern is different but I think they would probably be really helpful…here is a link to the page on the gusset, which is the part of the sock you are about to knit:

http://www.cometosilver.com/socks/SockClass_Gusset.htm

So, I guess it’s a little of both! I need to knit more rows for the heel flap, and I need to pick up and knit the stitches on the side of the heel flap. (Why don’t they just say pick up and knit?!).
Thanks for your help, Julie. I’ll give this another try this evening.