Pal Progress and a Sock Dilemma

Last month I bought my One Skein Secret Pal a skein of yarn. She wanted Rowan or Karabella, and I found her the most luscious skein I could, which turned out to be something soft and fuzzy from Rowan. For some reason I've been shy to spin for her; what if she doesn't like it? But on the other hand, I can send her a lot bigger skein this way, and it'll be something unique! I almost NEVER knit with commercial yarn because I can never find anything that's just right. So I took the plunge.

This is a merino/silk blend dyed in heirloom tomato kinds of colors, spun and plied. Here is the last little bit of roving being spun into singles.

And here is the finished skein. Its a hefty one; this will be more than enough for any one skein project.

Meanwhile, my own Secret Pal, whose identity is unknown to me except that she's a spinner and sends me gorgeous hand spun yarn (remember the crocheted pillow?) sent me rainbow colors of alpaca. Yum!! Its a singles yarn, and fairly fine. I wanted immediately to make two color Fair Isle or Norwegian mittens from it, but needed some neutral color(s) to knit as the second strand. I got busy right away; I really wanted to cast on with that soft, cheerful alpaca!

Those rainbow balls are from my Pal, and the darker colors (three shades) are the ones I made to go with them. I cast on originally with 000 needles, but it was way too snug for fun knitting, and the alpaca was weeping for space to bloom, so I went up to size 0. Its going much better now.

The gorgeousness of the rainbow colors is hidden by the way the balls are wound, but trust me. The colors are fantastic, and I'm so excited about this project. I've been dealing with a series of huge family emergencies, and this soft, bright, fuzzy stuff was just the thing to take my mind off of it all. My pal also sent me some soy silk top, which I'll spin up one of these days soon. What a pal!! More on the soy silk later.

And now for my dilemma; the toe up socks are on hold until I figure out what to do with them. As you can see here, I'm knitting these simultaneously, from two ends of the same ball of yarn so as not to get the unfortunate surprise I surely WOULD have gotten of running out of yarn halfway through the second sock.

It has become apparent that I only have enough yarn for a couple inches of ribbing. Should I dye/spin some more yarn to coordinate with this, and make regular length socks with some stripes in the cuffs to blend in the other yarn? Or is there some use in the world for short-topped socks? Please advise, oh wise knitters.