I want to put lighted garland around my outside doors for the
holidays. The garland is approximately 17-18' long. All the lights
I've found to wind into the garland are ~25' long.

I tried doubling back some of the lights so I had triple lights on
part of the garland and it looked OK but it was unwieldy.

Then I tried cutting the lights back (that is, shortening the
string). But some of the lights were brighter than others and blew
out in a half hour or so. I understand that's because there are 3-4
segments of lights in series in the string and by shortening the last
one, I lowered its resistance and increased the current through each
one. (I have a EE degree.) I supposed I could even out the
brightness and reduce the likelihood of blowing the lights by taking
2' out of each of 3 segments instead of 6' off the end but that's a
lot of work and leaves all of the lights with somewhat too high
current (2' of 8' means there would be 3/4 the bulbs (resistance) and
they'd get 4/3 the current (or something like that)).

I considered bundling the last few feet up in an opaque plastic bag or
something but I'm not sure how well that would work.

Any other solutions come to mind? Are there sources for light by the
foot?