It always makes me smile to see what people have made with my patterns, and hosting Crochet-Alongs is a great way to bring them together. Even though I’ve been largely absent for this CAL (a crazy move halfway around the world takes up a lot of time), I’m very happy to see that people have still participated – yay! I’d like to give a shout-out to the folks in the PlanetJune Ravelry group who keep the conversation going even when I’m not around to join in 🙂

It’s been quite a challenge to put this roundup together with my very limited internet access, but I’ve managed it. And now for the fun part – let’s take a look at the Easter CAL entries:

yaney made a cute PocketAmi bunny called Pip!

camaharet crocheted pretty daffodils in pink and white.

arbitrarily made this sweet Fuzzy Lamb with a colourful tummy!

Katalin whipped up a tulip and a bee to add to her daffodils to make a spring bouquet.

englishdormouse‘s Fuzzy Bunny looks striking with that lovely variegated yarn.

klopferli‘s  PocketAmi trio look like they are chilling out in a mini armchair!

CrochtColorJunkie crocheted a whole egg box full of Easter eggs…

…and she took her trio of PocketAmi bunnies all the way to the Griffith Observatory to take their photo beneath the Hollywood sign (okay, it’s pretty small, but it’s really there at the top of the hill!)

rastakt set up a cute backdrop for her sweet PocketAmi set.

I’m melting with the cuteness of Morgan’s adorable grey lamby!

saudistitcher made this duckling and ‘chocolate’ egg for her little granddaughter 🙂

Linda sent me this pic of her daffodil that she made into a pin (clever idea!)

The prolific winner of the Christmas CAL, jukatca, has been crocheting up a storm again, making the full selection of CAL projects! Fuzzy Lamb…

…a sweet Fuzzy Bunny…

…a collection of Easter Eggs (and don’t they look pretty in those colours?!)…

…a PocketAmi Easter set…

…and a vase of red and white daffodils. I used to love that variety with the red centres (narcissi, maybe?) – I haven’t seen them since I left the UK 8 years ago, so this brings back some memories for me!

And last, but definitely not least, Jolie made the daffodil pattern her own by adding some pretty embroidered embellishments.

And now the results of the random drawing:
First prize ($10 gift certificate) goes to Morgan S
Second prize (free pattern) goes to Linda S
Runner up prize (discount voucher) goes to all the other entrants – thank you for participating!

Please bear with me: I still don’t have internet access at home so it may take me a few more days to email your prizes to you, but I promise you’ll get them some time next week!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this roundup – I think all the projects are adorable! Happy Easter to those who observe it, and, for everyone else, don’t forget to go out tomorrow to pick up some cheap chocolate eggs 😉

As for me, I hope to get my Blackberry contract approved and get back online properly any day now – it pays to be patient in South Africa, as things happen when they happen here, and trying to rush them doesn’t help at all. I’m attempting to curb my frustration: I think a nice calm nature walk to look at some of the beautiful and exotic birds and plants that are everywhere here will take my mind off it! Here’s our temporary accommodation (actually, there are 3 identical pepperpot towers and mine is the middle one that you can’t see here, but you get the idea):

Down the hill (to the right in the above photo) is the city. And up the hill (to the left above) is nothing but a spectacular view up Table Mountain:

So don’t feel sorry for me – I’ll get the internet sorted out soon, and, apart from that, it’s pretty amazing here, especially for a big nature fan like me!

We’ve finally made it to South Africa! This is the view that greeted us as we stepped out of the airport – see the sunrise over Table Mountain in the background. A good start to our new life!

Just getting here has been an adventure in itself. We’ve had difficulties every step of the way: from selling the house in time; to getting our residency & work permits; to getting Maui’s travel paperwork in order – every possible thing always looked like it wasn’t going to work out, and then, at the very last possible minute, we got it sorted. It’s been the most stressful few months of my life, but, in what feels like a miracle, Dave, Maui, and I have all made it through safely and here we are, living in South Africa!

Just to give you an idea of the stress we’ve gone through, here are some highlights of the past week (skip this if you’re not interested in my travel adventures):

• We were 2 days away from losing our Canadian Citizenship application because the South African consulate had kept our passports for longer than anticipated, so our citizenship tests hadn’t gone forward to be approved by the judge, and the judge was now away for longer than we had left in Canada. I finally found an amazing lady at the citizenship office who went over and above for us and managed to get a judge in Ottawa to submit the approval by fax. We became Canadian citizens the day before we left, and, although we didn’t have time to enjoy it on the day – we had to head off to Guelph to get Maui’s export permit as soon as we left the ceremony – I’d just like to say that I’m very happy and proud to be able to say that I AM CANADIAN! I miss you already, Canada.
• When we arrived at the airport on Saturday, we took Maui to the cargo centre to be dropped off. I thought this was just going to be a formality – we had our official South African cat import permit, our official Canadian cat export permit, and the vet certificate to prove he’s healthy and doesn’t need to be quarantined on arrival. But it turns out they also wanted Maui’s rabies vaccination certificate because we were travelling via the UK, which has extremely strict policies on rabies, and apparently the vet certificate listing all his vaccinations wasn’t sufficient. The rabies form was currently somewhere inside our shipping container, already on its way to South Africa. What on earth could we do if they didn’t accept Maui?! After hours of stress and tears (on my part) I tried to phone our vet’s office, which was (extremely luckily) still open at 4pm on a Saturday, and they agreed to fax the missing paperwork directly to the British Airways World Cargo office where we were waiting. Fixed!
• The first leg of our long journey was fine: we arrived at Heathrow and spent 9 boring hours waiting for the next flight. We boarded on time, and then spent the next 5 hours sitting in the plane on the tarmac in London – apparently there was a problem with the plane, and they were trying to fix it so we could take off. As the engines weren’t running, neither was the plane’s air conditioning, and we were all sweltering inside the cabin. They handed out cups of water, but we had no dinner, and they wouldn’t let us out of the plane. At midnight, they finally decided we weren’t going anywhere, and let us off the plane. They found hotels for all of us, but it was 2am before we got there, and the hotel forced us to check out by 10am, even though our replacement flight wasn’t until 5.30pm. Dave checked on what would happen to poor Maui – apparently he would be looked after by quarantine vets overnight but there was no way we’d be allowed to see him, so we headed off for our hotel and a few hours’ sleep.

After another exciting day spent sitting in the comfort-free chairs at Heathrow, the replacement flight was uneventful, and we arrived at Cape Town airport in time to see the view at the top of this post! We collected Maui – in an amazing turn of events giving everything else that’s gone wrong, that involved nothing more than going to three buildings, signing forms and paying a fee, and then they handed over his crate.

I’d just like to say that Maui is the strongest, bravest cat in the world. He was immediately very happy to see us, and after a long drink, he seemed none the worse for wear for having been crated and away from us for 60 hours – poor baby! He’s settled into our new flat like a champ, and now he’s king of the world, sitting on the windowsill and surveying his new domain, and watching strange and unusual birds flying past the window. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world to have my boy back safely after all these adventures he’s gone through.

Maui! And, oh yeah, some city in the background…

The amazing view from our flat. Cape Town is looking pretty good so far 🙂

The only real downside is that we don’t have internet in this flat. I’m trying to get a Blackberry, but they won’t give me a contract as I don’t have a salary or 3 months’ South African bank records – I hope we can find a solution because it’s driving me crazy! Today, we’re visiting Dave’s new workplace, the Astronomical Observatory, and I can borrow their wireless while I’m here and post this. So, if I take a while to respond to emails etc, that’s why – please have some patience while I try to sort this out. If you need crochet patterns, please order through my fully automated shop and not Etsy, so you don’t have to wait for your patterns, and I don’t have to pay for internet to email them to you!

Once I fix the internet situation, I think I’m going to enjoy it here in Cape Town. I know this sounds lame (hello, internet addiction!) but I feel like I’m missing a limb when I can’t get online: not only am I in a strange country where I know nobody, but I’m cut off from my only link to my friends and family. I’ll lose that lonely feeling when I’m back online again, hopefully very soon.

And so begins my South African adventure…

Today’s PlanetJune Story is from Jeff McClelland. Jeff is the author of the comic book series Teddy and the Yeti, and he contacted me about a year ago to ask about a special pattern commission…

Jeff writes:

The worlds of comic books and amigurumi crochet probably don’t come together very often, but after discovering PlanetJune.com, I knew it was time for an old fashioned team up.

I write the comic Teddy and the Yeti and knew, as convention season crept up on me, that I’d want to take some material to shows beyond just the comics themselves – something that could catch someone’s eye as they walked by my booth. June’s patterns were just what I was looking for in terms of their unique, adorable appeal, so I contacted her about creating a new pattern based on the Yeti character from my book.

The final result was a pattern that was easy to crochet and cuter than I could have hoped for – the pictures don’t do the real thing justice. Now I have a Yeti doll – an official Yeti doll at that! – that brings people to my table at conventions; I’ve even had the pleasant experience of someone who might not be interested in comics liking the doll so much that he or she picks up the book as well.

Comic books are collaborative in nature: each creator brings along a different skill that results in a distinct final product. I like to think that the work I did in Teddy and the Yeti influenced PlanetJune’s Yeti crochet pattern ever so slightly to create a similar effect.

Thanks for sharing your story, Jeff. Your commission was an interesting challenge – definitely a departure from my usual subject matter, but I think we nailed it! For our collaboration I used colours inspired by the comic book yeti and added some of my trademark cuteness to the design.

Fellow geeks, you’ll love these pics Jeff sent from the 2010 New York Comic-Con:

Yeti takes over Comic-Con…

I know a Jayne hat when I see one, Jeff – very nice!


Yeti meets Thundercats’ Lion-O!

Story links:

• I’ll start accepting pattern commissions again when I’m settled in South Africa – email me if you’re interested in commissioning me.
• If you’d like to make a Yeti of your own, check out my Yeti and Bigfoot crochet pattern.
• You can order Teddy and the Yeti comic books through any comic store or online at Mile High Comics.

Do you have a PlanetJune Story you’d like to share? I’d love to hear it! Please email your story to june@planetjune.com, together with one or more high quality photos showing what you’ve made from PlanetJune patterns. If I choose your story to feature here on the blog, I’ll send you your choice of pattern from my shop to say thank you!

I can’t believe I’m leaving for South Africa in 10 days! April has really taken me by surprise.

I’ll try to get back on track by drawing March’s Review and Win contest winner… Taking the bonus entries for ‘first’ reviews into account, this month’s lucky winner is Mallaurie S, with her review of my AmiDogs Husky pattern:

The whole reason I started Amigurumi was to create a husky for my cousin; not a dog-a husky. I scoured the internet for a pattern-nothing even came close to this one. The pattern is beautiful, easy to follow and you give so much advice and reference points to make this husky the best it can be. And purchasing it was SOOO easy and fast! Once I found this pattern I didn’t want to wait, and thanks to the speedy billing-I was done in like less than 4 minutes. (I love the 3 for one deal…off to buy another!) Thanks so much for such lovely work! Can’t wait for new pups!! *ahem, maybe a bearded collie?* _3

Congratulations, Mallaurie, I’ll email you to find out which pattern you’d like as your prize! (And yes, I’ll be adding more breeds to the AmiDogs collection once I’m settled in SA!)

As I didn’t have time to promote the bonus entries in March, I’ll carry the bonus forward to next month’s drawing too. To encourage you to review products/patterns that don’t yet have a review in my shop, each ‘first’ review will get a bonus entry into April’s drawing 🙂

Easter CAL

With 2.5 weeks to go until Easter, there’s still plenty of time to crochet up some cuteness AND win a prize in the process.

As of today, I’ve only had one entry into the Easter CAL, although I’ve seen lots more projects posted on ravelry and flickr (don’t forget to submit your entry email, or you won’t be entered in the prize draw!) For prize details and entry instructions, see the Easter CAL post.

To participate, make any of these Easter-themed patterns and win:

• First prize: a $10 gift certificate to spend on anything in the PlanetJune store
• Second prize: a free pattern of your choice from the PlanetJune store
• Runner-up prizes: I’ll send a discount code to all participants, to use against their next order from the PlanetJune store.

Good luck!