Navy blue yarn from my mother's stash; purchased white and gray yarn
You can see the double stitches along the bottom, where the two yarns were each carried along the striped, working a stitch with both yarns at beginning and end of stripes, and once in the middle of each stripe.
Some people think old yarn "goes bad" or "dry rots". If it is mothproof or doesn't get eaten by moths or cockroaches or other things that will eat wool, and it's protected from excessive heat or sunlight...it can be fine after many decades. I have an afghan that my great-grandmother, mother, and great-aunt worked on in the 1920s or '30s. It's beautiful, bright, still great to throw over me when reading on the couch. The dark navy yarn is probably about 33-35 years old and it's great to work with.
The other sock of this pair wasn't started until this sock was finished, because I didn't want to open another skein of the navy. It's Red Heart, 100% wool, in big 4 oz pull skeins, too big to fit into my usual 1 gallon-size workbags. Red Heart doesn't have 100% wool anymore. Here's how you can tell it's a left sock:
Its matching right sock is well under way at this point.
All my "shorty" socks have the same basic pattern now, with the frame (top of sock, heel, and toe) in one color with matching contrasting stripes, and the main part of the foot in something else. This pattern would easily customize to any other size and shape of foot and of course can be any color, with any stripe pattern (or none) on the foot. Converting a taller sock to a short one is easy--just make the cuff/leg shorter.
This pair also mixes yarns from different sources, of different ages. I used a variegated yarn for some stries, and a several plain yarns for th others.