i really appreciate all the responses - it gives me hope that i can do these sox.
for anyone else who needs help, i also found this sock tutorial that looks pretty good (of course all of you old-timers on here probably already knew about this one), but i found it extremely helpful and for anyone just learning how to do sox, it's free and explains things in a simple way with LOTS of pictures - which i really need. so here's the link and again, thx for all the help:
http://www.royea.net/sockdemo1.html