New: CoopKnits Socks Yeah! Volume One and six gorgeous new shades!

Exciting news!  Rachel Coopey's latest sock book has just arrived this afternoon and it's gorgeous!  

A brand new book of Rachel’s original sock designs, this is her first book using her fabulous sock yarn, Socks Yeah!  

With 12 designs incorporating a variety of skills, including cabling, grafting, lace and twisted stitches, these patterns provide a great opportunity to try out new techniques. For beginners to sock knitting, a plain, top down sock is also included.  

With well-written instructions and step by-step tutorials for techniques such as Kitchener Stitch and Afterthought Heels are also provided, perfect if those techniques are unfamiliar to you or you need a refresher!  

Each design is beautifully balanced and well thought out, giving both experienced and novice knitters the chance to create wonderful, wearable socks that are enormously enjoyable to knit.  

111/Benitoite

112/Sugilite

113/Topaz

114/Peridot

115/Jadeite

116/Ruby

Rachel also has six gorgeous new shades of Socks Yeah (which are all featured in the book) out now!  

Scrumptious 4ply giveaway winner!  

We've been busy working away on exciting new secret things so there's not much we can show you at the moment, but while we've been busy we did pick a winner for our Scrumptious 4ply giveaway!  Rachel Ross won a skein of Scrumptious 4ply in Jade, congratulations to Rachel!  

Happy Knitting!  

Pattern week: CoopKnits Socks Yeah!

It's the final Friday for our current yarn of the month, CoopKnits Socks Yeah!  

So to celebrate, we thought we'd launch a new pattern!  

Introducing the Vintage Hexie Blanket by Heike Gittins:

Find the blanket on Ravelry here.

The perfect size for a pram or lap blanket, this pattern is simple to work and would be a great pattern for anyone who has mastered basic crochet stitches such as slip stitch, double crochet and trebles.  

Made up of fun to work hexagons, with a cute daisy centre we think this would look super cute either in a nursery or on your sofa!  

Best of all, the hexagons are crocheted together, so there's no pesky sewing.  Of course, worked up in CoopKnits Socks Yeah! the blanket will be really hard wearing and easy to care for so it's sure to become a favourite.  

We're giving you the chance to download this gorgeous pattern for free until the end of February, just visit the Ravelry page here, add the pattern to the cart and type (or copy and paste) the code sockblanketyeah into the coupon code box.  We've added a blanket planner to the pattern so you can plan your own unique arrangement of squares too.  We'd love to see what you come up with, so please tag us on intstagram, twitter (@fyberspates) and Facebook if you post any photos, or show us your projects in our Ravelry group.  

Last but not least, we have a little giveaway for you!  

For a chance to win a CoopKnits Socks Yeah goodie bag, including a Socks Yeah! project bag, two skeins of Socks Yeah! yarn, a sock needle gauge and a printed Rachel Coopey Sock pattern, enter our giveaway!    

To enter: 

Go to the CoopKnits Socks Yeah page on our website and pick your favourite colour.  

Leave a comment below telling us what it is and what you would knit with it together with your Ravelry name (so we can contact you if you win).  

For inspiration, check out our previous yarn of the month posts: 

Yarn Focus: CoopKnits Socks Yeah!  

Pattern Focus: CoopKnits Socks Yeah!  

Project Focus: CoopKnits Socks Yeah!  

We'll pick our favourite ideas next Friday and then contact the lucky winner!  

Happy knitting and crocheting!  

Project Focus: CoopKnits Socks Yeah!

So, this week we thought we'd show you some of our favourite Ravelry projects made using Socks Yeah!  After a lot of deliberation, we chose these gorgeous knits.....

First, we have a beautiful project from the pattern that we showed you last week, Hulanicki, knitted by Michelle in #105/Danburite: 

michelle166's Hulanicki socks

We love the beautifully defined architectural stitches on these!  

If you prefer a relaxing project, we think something like Jen's lovely Plain November Socks knitted from Rachel Coopey's Dave plain sock pattern (from CoopKnits Socks Volume Two) would be perfect!  

someofmybest's Plain November Socks

These socks look great in #106/Kunzite.  We love her photo styling too!  

Next we have Mandy's super cute Alfrick socks, knitted in #105/Danburite and #110/Malachite: 

mandyscragg's Alfrick

I'm a big fan of fairisle knitting so I adore these, and I particularly like the way the knit and purl textured pattern echoes the stranded colourwork on the rest of the sock.  

Last but not least we have another lovely pattern from Rachel's CoopKnits Socks Volume Two, Orville (not the duck).  This gorgeous pair were knitted by Gail for her son: 

writergirl3's Orville

We love the cables on these so much!  

Hope you've enjoyed this little look at our favourite projects in Socks Yeah!  If you want to see more projects in this yarn take a look on Ravelry here.  

Happy Knitting!  :)

Pattern Focus: CoopKnits Socks Yeah!

Last week we told you all about the yarn, so this week we though we'd show you some fab patterns that would work beautifully in CoopKnits Socks Yeah! 

(To see any of these patterns in more detail, just click on the picture to be taken to the Ravelry page.)

With our yarn of the month being Socks Yeah! it's only right to start our first pattern focus with a variety of socks!  (For all these sock patterns you'd need two skeins of Socks Yeah to make all but the largest adult sizes.)

....And what better place to start than with one of Rachel's own patterns, Hulanicki from the latest issue of Pompom magazine:

Hulanicki by Rachel Coopey from Pom Pom Magazine issue 15 Winter 2015

Designed especially to suit Socks Yeah, Rachel's socks feature columns of single twisted stitches which take advantage of the excellent stitch definition of this yarn. 

Next is another of out favourite new patterns from Rachel, Alfrick:

Alfrick Socks by Rachel Coopey from Ravelry

If you love stranded colour work, these cute socks are just the ticket, combining fun small scale fair isle patterning with knit and purl textured stitches.  And being fraternal socks, you'd only need a skein of each colour! 

We also love Rachel's Brighton socks from her first book, CoopKnits Socks Volume One:

Brighton Socks By Rachel Coopey from CoopKnits Socks Volume One

Another cute pair of colour work socks, these would be perfect in #105/Danburite with #104/Sphene and #107/Beryl as the accent colours (you'd need two skeins of the main colour and one each of the contrasts).  We love the flag inspired fair isle! 

But what if you're not really a sock knitter? 

How about this cute shawl, Nurmilintu by Heidi Alander? 

Nurmilintu by Heidi Alander from Ravelry (photo used with kind permission)

This pretty shawl combines garter stitch with lace and this combination of garter stitch and lace would work perfectly in Socks Yeah.  You'd need two skeins to knit this and we think it could look gorgeous in a strong colour like #104/Sphene or more subdued shade like #106/Kunzite. 

Or how about some mittens, like these gorgeous Snow flurry mittens by Deepika:

Snow flurry mittens by Deepika from Ravelry (photo used with kind permission)

These would look amazing in #106 Chryso and #109/Iolite, and with the Nylon content of Socks Yeah your finished mittens would see you through plenty of winters! 

We've been chatting to Rachel and there are lots of new designs for Socks Yeah! in the pipeline too, so watch this space :) 

Happy Knitting! 

Yarn Focus: CoopKnits Socks Yeah!

It's the New Year, so we thought we'd give our blog a little revamp!  Every month we're going to focus on one yarn and give you lots of inspiration and ideas for what to make with it.  This month (as you might have guessed from the title), we're focusing on our newest yarn, CoopKnits Socks Yeah!
 

Top row: #101/Obsidian, #102/Ammolite, #103/Axinite, #104/Sphene. 
Middle row: #105/Danburite, #106/Kunzite.
Bottom row: #107/Beryl, #108/Chryso, #109/ Iolite, #110/Malachite. 

This fab new sock yarn with a gorgeous palette of 10 colours is designed by Rachel Coopey of the aforementioned CoopKnits. 

If anyone knows what makes a good pair of socks, it's Rachel, so naturally her first yarn should be a sock yarn :D 

If like us, you're a fan of Rachel's sock patterns, you'll know just how much attention to detail she puts into her designs and this yarn is no different.  Having seen her carefully pick out a range of colours before narrowing them down to the perfect palette of ten shades, we can certainly back that up! 

There are cool and warm shades to suit anyone and so many colour combinations to play with!

Socks Yeah! balances out the most important properties of a sock yarn perfectly, with Superwash Merino for softness and easy washing and Nylon for strength. 

But it's not just for socks!  It makes beautiful accessories and garments too.  Rachel has even tried it out with crochet, making these pretty motifs to decorate her studio!

Socks Yeah! looks great crocheted too :)

We had a play around with some different stitches to see how they'd knit up, lace cables, twisted sts and colour work and a bit of crochet too. 

This yarn is such an all rounder, after making a range of swatches using different techniques I can confidently say that it would work just as well in the delicate pretty stitches of a lacy shawl as it would in a cosy pair of socks or that favourite sweater you'll wear to death. 

I wet blocked all the swatches, rolling them in a towel to get rid of the excess water and then pinning them out to dry (I stretched out the lace swatch, but none of the others). 

For the lace sample, I used #104/Sphene and 3mm needles to give a slightly more open fabric, but I used 2.5mm for all the others.  The lace fabric drapes really nicely on these slightly larger needles, but you could use a larger size still if you wanted.  Even only going up a couple of needle sizes given the fabric a lovely drape when blocked. 

I'm particularly pleased with the way the yarn works in stranded colour work (using shades #105/Danburite and #102/Ammolite), I find keeping an even tension in fair isle patterns can be tricky on little pieces and small needles, but the stitches stick to each other nicely and really keep the fabric neat. 

The slip stitch cabled swatch (shown in #102/Ammolite) has really nice stitch definition in both the cables and the columns of twisted sts between them. 

I love the way the colours in the range work together too, the fact that each shade is slightly heathered makes the transitions between the shades a little softer as you can see in this little crocheted square; worked on a 2.5mm hook in shades (from the centre out) #106/Kunzite, #105/Danburite, #102 Ammolite and #107/Beryl. 

For those who want to know, here are all the technical details:

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Socks Yeah! is hardwearing and can be machine washed at 30 degrees. 

Content: 75% Superwash Merino, 25% Nylon

Length per skein: 212m/231yds per 50g

Recommended needle size: 2.25mm - 2.75mm (US 1 - 2)

Tension: 36 sts and 50 rows to 10cm (4") using 2.25mm needles

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What would you make with Socks Yeah?