My current meeting knitting project is a pair of socks. Socks are great background knitting. But this last pair is not moving along. I knit a bit here and there but they’ve been underway for a long time without getting done. I’m almost avoiding picking them up to work on them. What is going on?

I realized today that I don’t much like the feel of them. I use standard sock yarn of 70% wool and 30% nylon for all my everyday socks. Or that’s what I thought, because I hadn’t paid attention to how different the quality can be. Today I touched the green half-done socks just after handling another pair and it struck me immediately. The wintery ones were soft and smooth; the green ones had fuzzy fibers sticking out here and there and felt rough in comparison. Even when I hadn’t consciously realized it, I felt it.

The green yarn is the leftovers of the first thin sock yarn I bought when I had just started producing socks for everyday use. (I hadn’t even discovered asymmetric toes yet.) Some cheap thing, bought online, sight unseen. I switched to small-scale hand-dyed sock yarns soon after, for prettier colours, but never compared the two side by side.

I’m three-quarters done with the second sock in the pair so I’m not going to give up now. I’ll power through and get these done, especially now that I know what my hang-up is. My feet probably won’t even feel the difference once the socks are finished. But my hands most definitely do – I’ve even given up on a yarn due to the feel. I’ll have to be more careful with my yarn buying in the future.