Bad Sock Mojo

Ok, enough already...I am sorry. I just want to make socks in peace. Ever since I wrote about a personal pet peeve of sock knitters not making their stripes match on each sock, I have struggled at making socks. There was the Trek yarn that didn't have enough to finish the toes on the second sock. I am STILL waiting for the yarn store to get more in. The last time I was in the store they told me they didn't have plans on ordering more as they order it in packages with several colors and they don't need more of the other colors. Of course that makes sense, but they only had 3 skeins, and none were the same color, and that is out of over 10 colors. They sure don't seem like they want me to finish these socks, or buy more yarn for that matter. I will most likely find the yarn online. Then there is the Moda Dea that I knit for my youngest daughter where the skein was plain crazy and there was no way to get a pair to match, and the second skein in the same dye lot also didn't match. Then I knit a pair for my BFF (which I haven't sent yet) I kept referring to them as the "Frankensocks" as the second sock had so many loose ends to weave in just to get them to match. I knit a pair for a niece and they turned out fine, so I thought my luck was changing, but that wasn't to be. I had bought some beautiful yarn from Ray at Knitivity. If you haven't checked out his yarn yet you MUST. It is so soft and pretty and a joy to knit with. Anyhow I had decided to knit my husband another pair as he was still waiting for his first pair. I chose to knit them in Doberman. I used the same pattern that I used for trek. I got the same gauge as with that yarn, and it was the gauge they recommended with the pattern. I knit the first sock and kept thinking it looked big, but reassured myself it wasn't, it just looked like it was. Well, I was wrong. It isn't HUGE on him, just not a great fit. I don't know what went wrong. Right now I am knitting the second sock a little smaller (actually the women's size) and then I will redo the first sock. I just want to figure out how to get past this bad streak with socks. Maybe I need to knit something else, like a shawl and then comeback to socks. Any suggestions would be appreciated. TTFN, Miki