Most people likely open their sock drawers to find a selection of dress and athletic socks in basic colors.

It’s certainly not like that for Susan Bonner, who has a globally sourced assortment to choose from — pairs she made from colorful yarn originating in places like Peru, Germany — and even Iowa.

Bonner is a knitter. And she’s also an avid traveler. Her love for both mingled about 15 years ago.

“We’ve done a lot of traveling and just got a lot of junk,” she said, referring to souvenir knickknacks. “One day I happened into a yarn shop and I thought, ‘Why not start (knitting socks)?’ It creates a great memory.”

Ever since then, she makes it a point to find a yarn shop wherever she travels. She picks up yarn, then knits socks for herself, her husband, Tom, and a daughter-in-law.

“I have probably about 40 pairs that I’ve made,” Susan said.

At the moment, she’s using a colorful yarn she picked up in Rouen, France, a visit made last year to mark the 80th anniversary of D-day.

And on a most recent trip to Los Alamos, New Mexico, she located a shop on the same street as a World War II museum she and her husband visited.

Even a June wedding in Mount Vernon, Iowa, brought her to a yarn store.

“That’s how it happens,” Susan said. “I usually do my research (into yarn shop locations) before we go.”

She’s bought bundles, or hanks, of yard in France, London, Munich, Colorado, Michigan and Florida, to name a few.

She favors local shops; that way she knows she’s supporting the local crafters who hand dye yarns made from the wool of sheep they raise.

Even the three sons shared by the Bonners — Joey and Tommy Bonner and Michael DiGirolamo — know to search for yarn when they’re away.

“I got one from Ireland,” Susan said. “And one boy was in Peru, and my son brought me a kit from Uruguay, so they’re just from all over the world. It’s just a lot of fun.”

Before starting a new project, she takes a few strands of the yarn she’ll be using and loops them onto the label. She then writes the place where she made the purchase — similar to an identification tag for the socks she’ll create.

She rolls the yarn onto a ball, and uses thin knitting needles to create tiny, tight stitches.

“I always knit on a plane, or when I’m waiting for a plane,” she said. “Also, in a car, in a hotel room at night. For me, it’s very calming.”

She tends to use multicolored yarn, and makes sure to match colors as she knits each sock. If one sock has, say, 10 rows of one color in a certain section, so too, does its mate.

“I’m very particular about how they end up,” Susan said. “The yarn actually self-stripes, but when you start another one you have to make you start at the same spot on a hank or they won’t match.”

Susan’s favorite pair is made from yarn purchased in Munich, Germany. The wool blend is durable, and it’s colored in blue and green hues.

Tom said he often receives compliments when he wears socks knitted by his wife.

“When I wear long pants, I pull them up like this to tie my shoe,” he demonstrated. It’s a way to “show off” his socks, he said with a smile.

Susan learned how to knit when she was a child.

“My mother didn’t knit. No one I knew knitted,” she said. “My parents bought me a little book. That’s how I learned.”

Her first project — which she still has — is a tiny sweater made for a doll.

“Of course, there were a lot of mistakes,” she admitted, “but as years went on, and I started to get around people that were better than I was, I was like a sponge. I just wanted to learn all about it.”

Susan enrolled in some lessons, including sessions to learn about knitting Fair Isle sweaters.

“So then I really got interested in the advanced stuff,” she said.

And when she retired from her teaching career at the Tamaqua Elementary School and West Penn Elementary School, she began instructing knitting classes in Tamaqua. It lasted for a while until the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

“It was a lot of fun,” she said. “So now many of my former students who are my age, we have a little yarn group — a knitting circle — that meets once a week.”

When she’s not knitting socks, she’s crafting pint-size hooded sweaters, cardigans and hats for babies.

“There is definitely a love for knitting in the area,” Susan said. “It’s not really a dying art. A lot of young people are doing it. I wish there were more people that did it.”