Speaking of disappointing sock yarn....

I've ordered a few times from Mary Maxim and Knitpiks, and have been generally pleased with the products I've ordered. However......

The last 6 skeins (2 of each color) of sock yarn I've ordered from MM have all had to be rewound. Well, one of the two has had to be rewound because they were wound opposite of each other! For those of you that don't knit, this means that if you pull from the center of the ball/skein, the stripes will come out backward. I was disappointed, to say the least. The sandstone colorway I just finished was okay. But naturally, the ones with the really long stripe repeats weren't!

I've always been pretty happy with what I've ordered from Knitpiks as well, until this last couple of skeins of sock yarn. It's the purple/pink/green colorway, and even though they are the same dye lot, they are totally different! I'm only hoping that nobody gets close enough to my feet to actually notice. It's disheartening to put in so much time in something, only to have it not quite match. If I were using this in a sweater or a larger item, I would have had to send them back. I'm very nervous about the other color I ordered.

Austermann Step.....I've made 4 or 5 pair of this yarn and it's always been great.....until this last skein I started for Ned. Those skeins are large enough so that you only need one for a pair. The stripes match up pretty well until about the 3rd repeat, then it's totally off! (I almost felt like it was Noro or something. :P) Where there should be a wide light/medium blue stripe, there is a very short dark blue stripe. The only thing I can think of is that the yarn got stuck in the roller as the dye was being sprayed on it, and it got all the blue dye in one little section that was meant for a much longer section. Dunno....

Well, that's my rant for the evening-I guess I'll go back to finishing some more socks. LOL