Premature Purchase

Last summer I bought a bunch of yarn, so much yarn that this summer I'm still nowhere near having used it. (This is due in large part to the monster project of the 17th century knitted waistcoat that took very nearly a full year to finish.) One of the things I bought yarn for is a pair of late 19th century knickerbocker stockings in one of the plaid patterns from Weldon's Practical Knitter. This week I sat down to decide exactly which plaid pattern I would use only to find that nearly all of these patterns are for much coarser stockings than I expected. Do I have six ounces each of two colors of fingering weight yarn? Nope. I bought laceweight because that's what most of the stockings I've made up to now have been. Oops. Should have read some of those patterns before purchasing.

I do have the right yarn for the Eleanora of Toledo stockings, but the idea of having two pair of red stockings on the needles is not appealing, even if one is plain wool and the other fancy silk.