I’ve been knitting socks for my husband for a long time. He has over developed calves due to running and can’t find socks to fit his legs. He prefers white because of athletes foot. Dark colours aggravate the condition. Usually I get Valley Yarns Huntington, because the cones are generous and I get several pairs of socks for a reasonable price. The last cone I purchased is less than acceptable. Although I have not yet finished the entire cone, I feel like I’ve spent more time darning socks than I have knitting them! I just ordered a cone of fuzzy nylon as a reinforcer thread for the first time in over 60 years of knitting! So, I wonder if anyone has other suggestions for good quality coned white sock yarn. I live in Hong Kong, so international purchasing is my only option for this kind of yarn. Thanks for any pointers you can offer.
That sounds very frustrating to have had a poor quality result from your regular yarn. I have no suggestion for replacements but just wondered if you had contacted the producer or supplier to let them know how disappointed you are? I’ve done this with yarn which was lower quality than expected and the yarn shop was very helpful and replaced my faulty yarn free of charge. You could ask if they’ve changed their production methods or raw material supplier resulting in poor quality yarn.
It’s a shame youre having to darn after so much time spent knitting. How fortunate your husband is though!
I’m sorry you had such a poor experience with this yarn. Valley Yarns are usually of consistent quality. I agree, let the company know that you aren’t happy with this particular cone.
@engblom @Beth_Leatherman do you have any yarn suggestions?
I wonder where the socks are wearing out, heel, toe, sole? There are afterthought heels that might make repairs easier and there are even socks with replaceable soles.
Thank you both for your condolences. This means more to me right now than fixing the issue. But I also appreciate the advice. It never occurred to me to contact the company, but it should have. I’ve done so for other issues, so I don’t know why this obvious thing didn’t come to mind. The holes are mostly in the heels. I hadn’t thought about an after thought heel, but I may try that on the next pair. My fuzzy nylon will arrive tomorrow. It could have come today, but at a most inconvenient time, so I asked for them to bring it tomorrow. So I’ll finish this cone with the fuzzy nylon and see how that works. Although I’m almost afraid instead of reinforcing this yarn, it will simply cut it to pieces. I plan to ply it in order to reduce that possibility. And believe me, I will be contacting Valley about this cone. True, it’s nearly used up, but that’s because all the holes started appearing a few months after I’d knitted those socks.
Salmonmac, my husband understands his good fortune. Time after time he has pulled up his pants leg — in public — to show off his socks. They are just plain, vanilla socks, no pattern at all because he wouldn’t wear them, and he still struts like a peacock. Just because of a simple pair of socks. I won’t tell you what he does when he wears the cardigans I make for him!
Your husband is a gem and more than knitworthy. Let us know how this all turns out please.
I hope you get a positive response from the company about your yarn.
Just a quick update, although there’s nothing to report. I emailed the company and haven’t heard anything from them. Life getting in the way prevented me from following up till this morning. I’ve sent a message via the resident bot on the Webs page, and will give that a couple of days to net some kind of response. (My morning is the middle of the night in the US, so they aren’t open right now.) Then we’ll see. Hopefully will have more news about this soon.
My fuzzy nylon did arrive, but it’s not at all what I thought I’d bought. I’ve seen the cones my sister uses for her serger machine, and they are huge. What I received is indeed a cone, but the tiniest thing imaginable. So I’m knitting the current heels as a true heel flap (I usually use a fleegal heel). Of course, I’m reinforcing the heel with a linen stitch (always do). I’ll pair this fuzzy nylon with a strand of the yarn and reinforce the soles with duplicate stitch before letting my husband wear this pair. Then we’ll see what happens. I know, it’s a lot of work, but darning holes is too, and I’d rather reinforce an existing fabric than work on top of basically nothing.
Sounds like you’ve planned well for the areas that get the most wear. Hope the company responds soon and thanks for the update.
News, finally. Webs has no record of my last purchase, and I also can’t find a record of it on their site. So I probably ordered the yarn through a 3rd party by accident. I have so many places I order yarn from, and I may have got this thinking it was through Webs. They did try to be helpful, and even had people go through their current stock to check the yarn they have. They found it to be acceptable, of the same quality as expected. So, I’ll have at least one more go with Valley Huntington, but this time I will definitely order through their site.
Two of our 3 sons now live in the States, and they are coming home for Christmas. So I’ll have the yarn shipped to one of them and let him bring it when he comes. Then we’ll see. Thank you for your feedback, suggestions and encouragement. After so many years of using this yarn, maybe it was just time for me to run into one bad batch. I hope and pray that’s all it was.
Wonderful to have the family together for Christmas plus a good solution to the yarn search. Fingers crossed that this batch works!
Thank you. Have a good Holiday season.