EDITED
Sorry, I misread the pattern! D’oh…
Hello there… It’s another day and another sock. I have no idea what this means. Can someone translate it for me? The leg up to this point was s1k1 on right side, s1 p to end on wrong side. Here it is copied and pasted:
Start heel flap.
S1K1 on the right side
S1, Purl across remaining stitches.
Repeat 12 times (include these first two in your count)
Turn Heel
S1, K12, K2tog, K1, Turn, s1, P3, P2tog, p1, Turn, knit back to space and K2tog the space stitches together, K1, turn, Purl back to the space, P2tog , P1, Turn. Continue in this manner until you have 14 stitches left on the needle.
At first I thought this was a kind of Star Trek question but no.
The space the pattern is referring to is really a gap at the place where you turned and slipped one and began to purl. The idea is to knit together the stitch before the gap and the stitch after the gap. I think this’ll be clearer when you give it a try and see it on the needles.
Oooh thanks so much, that really helps! I thought for a while I’d figured it out and then I tried it twice over and was wondering why I was getting holes. I’m also glad that I got it wrong, because I’ve just found out I’d only knitted half the length of the heel flap (counted 13 rows instead of 12 repetitions of two rows!)!
Well that was an exhausting almost-waste of time… lol…!
It all counts as experience. It saved you from a too-short heel and you’ll for sure know next time. So all to the good.
Yup, it all worked out! :woohoo: btw I lol’d at the Star Trek thing 
To bravely knit where no one has knit before. :mrgreen:
Amy’s Working the Heel of a Sock video might help you see what’s happening here.
You were right, just done the heel now and it looks great! Come to think of it, this might have been the way my first ever pair of socks was designed too, but the directions specified the number of stitches instead of describing the space. I suppose patterns are a little window into how the pattern writer navigates their knitting! Fascinating…
There is a real benefit to the “knit to the gap” instruction. You can see without having to count every stitch where your decrease goes. You’ll encounter closing the gap in anything involving short rows.
Ya, it would have been the icing on the cake if the beginner pattern pointed out that you were closing the gap by knitting the two space sts. It’s great not having to count all the time. The technique I added in for the second pattern I knitted also had that effect, because it made a sort of two-in-one stitch that was distinctive.
“…knitting: the final frontier. these are the tribulations of the website knittinghelp.com. its continuing mission: to explore strange new yarns, to seek out new patterns and new techniques, to boldly knit what no one has knit before…”
something like that, maybe?
:roflhard: