100 grams is not enough

Note to self...

When knitting socks for my dad and his size 13 feet, 100 grams is not enough. I seemed to know this last year, when I used a contrast yarn for toes and heels, and used every last yard of the 100 grams of the main yarn.

The yarn is Everlasting from Dream in Color (which I also used this summer), an 8-ply 100% merino sock yarn. As it became apparent that I was running out of yarn before making the leg tall enough, I started considering my options. A quick search of DIC retailers did not come up with any skeins in the same colourway (Black & White).  I first considered using a black DIC in the different sock yarn Smooshy to make a black contrast cuff. But Smooshy is a very different base, and wouldn't blend well. I realised I have a yarn in a very similar base, and I even have it in slate grey and 100% merino.  It's a skein of Woolmeise, and while I have a small but steady collection of WM, I have never actually opened and knit with my own skein of the stuff. (I knit with it once, but some one else's skein.)

Turns out, the skein is a fairly good match. Not as excellent as the picture might suggest, but impressively similar. It has less variegation, and a slightly different hue.

I have busted open the skein and wound it, and am ready to graft it into the sock. I am confident and optimistic about the results. What makes me crabby is that I should have just knit the entire sock with that skein instead, since the WM is a 150 gram skein, and used the Everlasting for some one with smaller feet. I know better, and maybe now I will remember that.

From now on, either WM, or contrast toes and heels for my father's socks. I will remember this.