A Sock Challenge

I'm still working on my herringbone socks. As you can see, one is finished except for the toe. The other one I'm having more of a challenge with because of the color pooling that's happening. All the colors keep repeating at the same place, hence the concentration of browns and blues.

Here's another view. See how the sock on the left is nice and evenly striped, even at the instep. The sock on the right is not as even.

So, there's no choice but to rip back, from this:


To this:
Since this is color knitting, I had to tink rather than rip, which I did over 21 rows, back to the instep decreases. Then I started at another place in my ball, hoping to get to a place in the yarn where the dye was closer to making even stripes. And now the pooling is worse:

It figures this is happening at the top of the foot, where it's most noticeable. I'm not sure what the solution is. Maybe I'll put these aside until our SnB and hopefully get a good consult.

Ideas??