Patterns and Self-Patterning Socks

I've been trying to resist buying yarn this year.  Not fully resisting--there were those two little trips to Loopy. But I managed to get in and out of NY without actually stepping into a wool shop and I have been making myself delete all of the wonderful weekly updates from Sherri at The Loopy Ewe. She makes it all sound so wonderfully delicious. Surely* I just need another half dozen skeins of fingering weight yarn so I feel like I have enough and don't need any more.

In practice, we all know I have way too much wool at Chez Hedgehog.

And so, I've been going back into Ravelry. This shouldn't imply that it's hard to get me there, but I fall out of regular pattern searching. I need to go through my queue and pick some things out, make some actual knitting plans (for gifts and such) and have some method to my casting on madness.

I've also bought a couple of patterns, one spontaneously, and one spontaneously but I've had my eye on it for a while. The first was Wendy Knit's Japanese Garden Shawl. I very much like her patterns and here was a lovely cause and she suggested it might be a perfect shawl to use up an entire single skein of Wollmeise--of which we all know I have a few. And then Cristi (TurtleGirl76) blogged again about her Breaking Hearts Socks and I had to go buy that. My knitting of patterned socks is rare, being the queen of the 2x2 rib and all that, but it's so pretty and I've been watching Carin knit up a pair. Of course, since purchasing the pattern (yesterday) I've had to talk myself down off the Blue Moon Fiber Arts website several times. I don't HAVE to make the Breaking Hearts out of BMFA STR Lightweight in ten different colors. Truly. I have lots of other fingering weight that would make lovely socks and I'm sure Cristi won't mind. I am a sheep, but I'm trying to be a slightly unusual sheep.

The Ugly Socks, pictured above, continue to chug along. They came with me to New York and added one American Air flight, several NY subways, the Blonde's House, the LIRR, and at least one bar to places where I've knit them. I did not knit on them at church, but only because we didn't stay through the sermon. They do not match. I had thought I was starting pretty close to matching, but I didn't realize until about an inch into sock 2 that it's really two patterns of stripe thickness and at that point rolled my eyes and kept knitting. 

The Blonde asked me, politely, who they were for while I was knitting on them at her house. I could see visible relief when I told her I thought the self-patterning wasn't my cup of tea but that I was just plowing through them as a traveling project. Maybe I can over dye the yarn? Can one find brown Kool-aid?

*Don't call me Shirley...