What I've learnt: Avoid pretty plum-coloured yarn

I have two balls of nearly identical yarn. They are small (10g) balls, one is cream and one is plum. Apart from the colour, they are identical.

I knitted a tension swatch with the cream, so as to not handle the plum too much. The cream knitting came out beautifully. When I attempted to knit with the plum, it resulted in an unholy mess. (By the way, my tension was almost perfect, my rows were spot on target, 32 rows in 10cm, and my stitches were just a little too loose - I was quite chuffed with myself.)

Time and time again my plum knitting looks, for lack of a better word, holey. I tried three times and finally gave up. I will try again later tonight, and if it doesn't look better this time, I will use other yarn. It can't be me. My cream swatch was fine, neat and delicate and stretchy and soft. I'm using the same needles. I'm going to knit past any holes and ignore the whole thing if it looks like a lace doily. And blame a cat.