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5 Questions for Rachel Coopey

Welcome to the last day of or week of 5: 5 designers, 5 interviews, 5 designs, all to celebrate the newest issue of Sockupied, now out in an easy-to-download PDF.  If you’ve missed the previous days, let me catch you up: Monday was Amy Palmer, Tuesday Kate Atherley, Wednesday M.K. Nance, and Thursday Mone Drager.  A point of housekeeping: the contest will run through the weekend, with winners announced next week.

© Sockupied/Harper Point

Today we have Rachel Coopey, author of three books: Toasty, Socks, Socks Vol. 2, and A Knitted Sock Society.  If you think Kate Atherley designed a lot of socks, think again: of Rachel’s 195 published designs, 148 of them are sock patterns – a whopping 75%.  Rachel’s socks are serious business: she favors the Heel Flap over any other heel style.  This isn’t the first time Rachel and I have been in Sockupied together – we were in last year’s Spring Sockupied too!  I interviewed her then – almost exactly a year ago!  This year in Sockupied, Rachel’s Laith Socks feature a stitch pattern that moves from one foot to the other – creating a fun set of fraternal twin socks.

If you were to describe your socks as an animal, what would it be? Why?
Rachel: Something warm, maybe a bear? Something that symbolises how much we need hand-knitted socks in the current freezing weather!

You’ve created a lot of sock patterns.  Do you ever come up with an idea, or sketch out a theme just to realize that you’ve already created something similar?  How do you keep your designs fresh?
Rachel: No, I don’t think so. I mean socks are similar in that they are mostly the same shape but there’s an endless combination of stitches and fabric techniques. When I do think I can’t design anything new I suppose I’ll stop but I don’t think that will be soon!

All of the designers were working on socks during the Summer of 2014.  What else were you working on or thinking of as you created your pattern?
Rachel: I was pretty busy working on my new book, Coop Knits Socks Volume 2, I was knitting samples and writing patterns, we had lovely weather this summer so I mostly worked in the garden, it was pretty nice! I also attend a lot of Fibre events and shows and last summer was particularly hectic, I was at Woolfest, Unwind Brighton and Fibre East in the space of 4 weeks so that was fun but exhausting!

Did you run into any problems or challenges when you were working on designing the socks or writing the pattern?  What was your favorite part of creating Laith?
Rachel: They flew off the needles with no problems, I love working with Opal yarn, it’s one of my absolute all-time favourite sock yarns and the colour was great. I love designing non-identcal socks, ones that don’t exactly match across the pair but are strongly related – sometimes called fraternal socks. I think it really helps with second-sock-syndrome and keeps things interesting.

What are 3-5 things you are loving lately?
Rachel: The Robert Galbrath books – I love a good mystery and these didn’t disappoint me.

The new Bjork album and TV series Fortitude – are intensifying my already intense desire to visit Iceland. (Fortitude is set in Svalbard but filmed in Iceland). I have a husband who is all but allergic to the cold weather so I suspect my adventure there may be alone.

The new Arne & Carlos Regia sock yarns – these are great self patterning yarns in interesting colours, they are selling out everywhere though so if you see them you should snap them up before they disappear!

© Sockupied/Harper Point

This week’s just a week of interviews for Rachel – in addition to Laith Socks, Rachel has an interview in Sockupied by Rachel Atkinson!  Learn Rachel’s favorite shoes, her favorite knitting drinks,
knitting tips and more!

Rachel’s socks are done in Zwerger Garn’s Opal Uni Solid.  As part of the contest, Opal’s distributor in the US, Unicorn Books & Crafts has generously offered up a skein of Opal Uni to go with our issue of Sockupied!

To enter the contest, use the Rafflecopter widget below!  You can enter the contest multiple times by doing different things – so have fun with it.  We will have three winners to the drawing, be sure to scroll through and see all the great prizes!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Introducing: Ravelry 101

One of the most frequent questions I get from former students is, “When are you going to be teaching nearby again?”  It’s an understandable question, considering that I’m often teaching at wildly different venues along the East Coast.

woman's hands typing at computer screen looking at the Ravelry website sign-in pageWhich is why I’m pleased to announce a new venue for teaching today!  I’ve partnered with Interweave’s Online Learning Department to bring you two classes on using Ravelry.  Ravelry 101, will run live on February 18th, 2015, and Ravelry 201 will run 2 weeks later, on March 4th.  Both classes run for an hour, starting at 1pm EST.  The best part about the class?  You don’t have to be there live to take the workshop!  After the class is recorded, you can access the video whenever you want to watch it.

I’d like to take some time to highlight Ravelry 101 today, and explain why you’d find the class valuable.

First, what is Ravelry?
Ravelry is a website that is both a database of patterns and a social place to interact with other knitters, crocheters, and yarn enthusiasts.  Just this month they tipped over into 5 million users! It’s an incredibly powerful tool for knitters and crocheters.  When I worked in my LYS, I consulted it often to help customers find patterns, learn more about a yarn used in a pattern to make knowledgeable yarn substitutions, and to discover if a pattern had mistakes or errata.

Why would I find Ravelry 101 helpful?
As I mentioned, I often use Ravelry for a variety of purposes.  Ravelry 101 focuses on the database side of Ravelry, and how it can be used to make your life easier.  During Ravelry 101 I’ll show you how you can easily search your paper library, to find that “one pattern” that you saw in a magazine 3 years ago.  I’ll show you one of my favorite tricks to picking out a pattern using Ravelry’s advanced search functions.  I’ll also break down how Ravelry is organized, making sure you can always find your way to what you need and want!

Where can I buy Ravelry 101?
Ravelry 101 is being run by Interweave’s Online Learning Platform.  This means that you can take the class live, at 1 pm EST on February 18th, or at any time after that!  Signup is easy, just go to http://www.interweavestore.com/ravelry-101 to signup and add the class to your basket.  The best part?  It’s only $19.99 – an incredible deal for one of my classes!

I look forward to joining ya’ll on February 18th – I’m really looking forward to showing you what I love about this website!

Totem is Out!

About 15 minutes ago I was taking a break from working on writing a pattern for Sockupied that will be coming out in the Fall.

I was scrolling through my Google Feed reader when I came across this post on Knitting Daily.  I’m going through the article when I notice the socks – and my first thought is, huh.  I made a pair of socks in that colorway (by Three Irish Girls).  Then I go… oh wait… that IS my pattern!

Totem, I’m happy to announce, is out.  You can buy it on the Interweave website, and it’s a true steal.  And it’s on the cover of Sockupied! (They’re the red ones, seen to the right.)

In the upcoming days I’ll be talking a little bit about the inspiration for Totem, early iterations, the design process for this sock, and a variety of other things!

Have you looked at the new Sockupied yet?  Anything you see in the magazine that you’d like to work up?