What a Tangled Web!

I thought I found a way to only re-do the cuff on my socks. I would put in a life-line right afer the cuff (no problem), then undo my knitting up to that point, then pick up stitches from my life-line and knit the cuff from the bottom up. Sounds like it would work, right? The snag: undoing the cuff is proving to be very time consuming and messy. See picture above. I think I knit a whole sock in less time than I've spent so far picking out the cuff. My consolation is that I will have knee socks that stay up when I'm done.