Today’s PlanetJune Story is from Melissa Frelo of Aurora, IL, and it’s a case of perfect timing: it’s a guinea pig story, and I also have a guinea pig photo to share with you today. We found a wonderful Wildlife Sanctuary in Hout Bay called World of Birds. I joined as a member so I can go back often – it’s the largest bird park in Africa so it’ll be a while before I’ve explored all the amazing free-flying walk-through cages and aviaries. They rescue animals as well as birds, and for some reason (abandoned pets, maybe?) they have a huge cage full of guinea pigs:

Guinea pigs galore!

Unexpected, but very cute! The guinea pigs all seemed very contented, running free in their giant outdoor area and then going back inside for food and water – I think they have a good life there.

And now a segue from real guinea pigs to crocheted guinea pigs!
Melissa writes:

I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed making the fuzzy guinea pigs. I ordered the pattern from your website and made the piggies for my childrens’ Easter baskets. Although I have experience crocheting, this was my first attempt at amigurumi. Your instructions were very detailed and easy to follow and the results were great. I attached a few photos of the real piggies and their crocheted friends. Thanks for the wonderful pattern!

And thank you, Melissa, for sharing your story with us. Here are Melissa’s guinea pigs, Roxie and Gracie, and their crocheted counterparts – it’s hard to tell which are real and which are crocheted!

Melissa did a great job with matching the markings to her piggies’ markings.

Just look at those sweet guinea piggy faces – so adorable! My guinea pig pattern has been a bestseller for years now, but if you haven’t jumped on the guinea pig train yet, you can get on board and pick up the pattern in my shop 🙂

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!

Wow, I’m blown away by the response to my bird photos post! Not only that you like my photos (yay!) and my sharing my nature-related experiences here (double yay!) but also to hear from some previously-silent readers. Hello new commenters! Thanks for speaking up – it’s really nice to hear from you 🙂

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Over the last couple of months, my business has obviously suffered: firstly having to (temporarily) close some sections of my shop as I can’t ship physical products at the moment; secondly not having any time to work on new designs for my pattern range; and thirdly not being available much to converse/share/help in my usual way, which has also led to a drop in my pattern sales.

I was on the brink of putting out a call for help and asking you to recommend me to your crocheting friends, when I came up with a perfect plan: we can help each other! I’ve created the PlanetJune Affiliate program so you can earn a commission when you refer your friends and readers to my shop.

If you’re familiar with the Amazon affiliate program, mine is very similar: you link to me using your unique ID code, my shop tracks everyone who visits using that code, and you get 5% commission on any orders that are made using your code. Every quarter, I’ll pay out your affiliate earnings as PlanetJune gift certificates.

I’m really excited about this program, but because it’s brand new (I pre-launched it on Twitter and my Facebook page last week) I’m open to modifying things to make it work better for you…

For example, you can choose any of the banners pictured above to post on your blog etc, but if none of them is a convenient size to fit your sidebar, or you run a website full of pug fans (for example), and a pug banner would be the best way to grab their attention, just let me know and I’d be happy to add custom banners to fit your site and audience 🙂

I hope you’re as excited about this opportunity as I am! If you are, please sign up as a PlanetJune Affiliate today, help me to spread the word about my patterns to other crocheters, and we’ll both win as a result!

I have the amazing opportunity now I live in South Africa to experience a different side of nature; one that most of you will probably only see in wildlife documentaries, if at all. So I hope you’ll forgive me if I occasionally deviate from the crafty nature of my blog to share some photos of the plants, birds and animals I see! As these will probably be inspiration for my future crochet designs, I don’t think it’s totally off-topic, and I hope you’ll enjoy a few glimpses into the nature of South Africa. (Please just skip these posts if they don’t interest you – I promise they won’t take over the blog!)

In this first post, I’ll show you some of our garden birds…

Wild Guineafowl roam freely everywhere – these are part of a group of about a dozen that patrol the grounds of our flats and the surrounding streets. They look a bit like small turkeys and they bob their heads quickly as they walk (as captured by the motion blur in my photo). Their loud call sounds like a squeaky bike wheel, and when several start up, it gets pretty raucous…

The Cape Sugarbird feeds on the nectar in protea flowers, as shown here (this type of protea is called a Sugarbush and produces copious nectar which can be used as a natural sweetener). The female (above) is nice-looking, but the male is the real stunner…

…his tail feathers are twice as long as his entire body! Very impressive when he’s sitting like this, but it looks like hard work to fly dragging those feathers behind him…

There’s nothing in this picture for scale, but ibis are very large! I’ve only seen them in zoos before, so having them as a common garden visitor is pretty amazing – we see them from our window, pulling worms out of the lawn with those long beaks. This type of ibis is called Hadeda (rhymes with la-di-la!) and is named for its loud call of “ha-ha-haadada”. When a group fly over or sit in a tree shouting that in unison, you really know about it!

Larger than the common starling you’re probably familiar with, the Red-Winged Starling looks fairly unexciting, until it takes flight… Do you see that edge of rusty red-brown on its wing? Their entire wings are that colour when in flight, so they look much more interesting as they fly by than they do when they land. I haven’t been able to capture that in a photo though 🙂

I know doves aren’t exactly unusual, but they are so sweet I thought you might like to see one anyway. There are two common types of dove here: the Cape Turtle Dove and the little colourful one pictured here, the Laughing Dove.

I first saw White-Eyes on holiday in Hawaii, so they feel like a very tropical bird to me. Very small and shy, the Cape White-Eyes are very hard to photograph because they don’t stay in plain sight for long. This is the best photo I’ve been able to capture so far, but I’ll keep trying 🙂

There’s so much more amazing wildlife here. I’d love to write more posts like this and share what I see with you, but only if I have an interested audience: I don’t want to bore you! If you’ve enjoyed this post, please leave a comment so I know you’d like to see more…

Will I ever get caught up with everything?! I’ve just drawn April’s Review and Win contest winner… Taking the bonus entries for ‘first’ reviews into account, this month’s lucky winner is Rebecca P, with her review of my ever-popular AquaAmi Sea Turtle pattern:

I love this pattern, it is easy to follow and allows the crocheter to create a beautiful turtle. It is also the cutest and most realistic turtle I have been able to find.

Congratulations, Rebecca, I’ll email you to find out which pattern you’d like as your prize!

While I’m here, I thought I’d share a couple more Cape Town photos with you. Remember the ugly round tower block I’m living in at the moment? It was only when we visited Signal Hill and looked across the city towards Table Mountain that we fully appreciated what an eyesore the 3 towers really are: here’s a pic of them rising above the city and spoiling the view of the mountain:

We’re staying in the middle one. At least it won’t be for too long, and we have the spectacular views to enjoy while we’re up here 🙂

And one more point of interest: the currency (South African Rands, ZAR) has pictures of the Big 5 animals on it – isn’t that cool?! (Apart from the hunting connotations, but I’ll choose to ignore that.) It’s much easier to remember that R10 is a rhino instead of some random historical figure I’ve never heard of, like on most banknotes 🙂

FYI, the banknote animals are:
R10 Rhinoceros
R20 Elephant
R50 Lion
R100 Cape Buffalo
R200 Leopard

Just don’t ask me why they are in that order – I have no idea!

Today I get to restart working full-time at PlanetJune – I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed it!

I wasn’t sure what to do first – I feel like I’m months behind on everything – but then yesterday, we were lucky enough to glimpse a very special bird: a kingfisher. Please excuse the quality of these pics; it’s a tiny bird and we couldn’t get close without it flying away… I snapped these at full 18x zoom:

It seemed like a sign that my first order of business should be to publish my kingfisher pattern, don’t you agree? You may notice that the colours and markings in the photos above don’t quite match my design below: was saw a Malachite Kingfisher (common here in southern Africa) but the breed I designed is the Common Kingfisher (the UK variety) who’s more teal coloured than blue, and doesn’t have a red beak. And now onto my design…

I designed this Kingfisher pattern last year. It was first published in Inside Crochet magazine, but written in UK crochet terminology and missing all my step-by-step assembly photos. Now I’m publishing it in standard terms and PlanetJune format!

This bird can stand all by himself, without using any wires or internal armatures to strengthen him, so, if you omit the safety eyes, he’d be a kid-friendly toy as well as a decorative piece.

I’m particularly proud of this design because I incorporated a clever new method I developed to make the orange/blue stripe on the body match on both sides (as amigurumi-style stitches don’t stack on top of each other, if you crocheted both sides the same way, one side would slope up and the other would slope down).

The Kingfisher crochet pattern is now available to purchase in my shop. I hope it’ll be the first of many PlanetJune bird designs…

This is the first post I’ve written using my new BlackBerry (although the photos were taken back in Canada a few weeks ago)! I hope this works, as I won’t have internet access for my laptop until our furniture arrives in a couple of months and we can move out of this temporary accommodation. Here goes…

Cutting Down (aka downsizing my wardrobe)

As part of our move preparations, I sorted through all my clothes and donated any that didn’t fit or suit me any more. We gave away over 8 garbage bags full of clothing (mostly mine) and I reduced my wardrobe by about half! In case this makes me sound like a clothes junkie, I should probably clarify that most of these clothes had UK labels, which makes them at least 8 years old(!) – I really don’t like to get rid of anything that I may find a use for some day…

I do feel the occasional twinge of regret about all the stuff I’ve donated, but, on the whole, it’s liberating to have reduced my wardrobe by so much. If you have the time, I recommend you refresh your wardrobe too. This is how I did it:

How to refresh your wardrobe

1. Try on every single item of clothing you own
2. Look at yourself in a mirror (full-length if possible) and pretend you’re in a shop fitting room
3. Ask yourself ‘Would I pay to buy this right now?’

If the answer is ‘no’, it’s time to repair/refashion/donate/toss it, and reclaim some space in your closet!

Cutting Up (aka mending and refashioning)

My plan was to pack only wearable clothes for the move, so I donated the larger ‘project’ items (like sweaters I’d had vague plans to felt and make into something at some point – i.e. I’d probably never actually do anything with), and concentrated on the simpler alterations I needed to bring everything else into wearable condition:

Exhibit A: Mending. New buttons attached, belt loop stitched back on, strap stitched back down. Quick and easy when you actually sit down and do it, and now I’ve rescued 3 pairs of pants and a top from the mending pile.

Mending: new buttons, fixed belt loop, fixed strap

Exhibit B: Extra-long pants. Oh look! I’ve been Americanised! I used to say ‘trousers’ – I wonder when that changed… It’s ridiculously easy to take up pants neatly, although I can never remember how to do it. Luckily, I wrote a really good tutorial for it in 2007 – it saves me from having to figure the method out each time! How embarrassing that I had 2 pairs I’ve never worn because they’ve been sitting, with the tags still attached, waiting for me to take up the excess length. 2 brand-new pairs of pants to add to my wardrobe – very nice.

Shortening: I cut 3″ off the bottom of these pants and re-hemmed them

Exhibit C: Too-short pants. As I’m 5’2″, I’ve made the mistake of buying “short” length trousers in the past, and worn them for far too long before I realised they were that awkward ankle length. I’ve donated almost all of these faux pas pairs, but I have these linen-mix jeans that I really love (apart from the length). What to do with them? I’ve seen tutorials for adding a decorative ribbon or strip of fabric at the bottom, but that’s really not a look I’d like to wear. So, I used my handy taking up trousers tutorial again, and converted them into capris! Same method, different result.

New capris: cropped pants from embarrassing ankle-length jeans

Exhibit D: Too-long skirt. I’m not going to subject you to a ‘before’ photo – let’s just say that this ankle-length skirt, circa early 90s, was not at all flattering on my short pear-shaped frame. But it fits nicely, I like the print, and you’d never guess how old it is (apart from the dated style). It’s a stretch fabric – always a challenge to work with – but I got brave with my scissors and cut it off at knee length, zig-zag stitched around the raw edge to stop it from fraying (I don’t have a serger), then turned up the bottom edge and stitched a new hem. I only folded the hem over once in this case to reduce bulk and weight. I skeptically tried the straight stretch stitch on my sewing machine for the first time – it really works! I now have a really cute knee-length skirt, and, added bonus, I have a sizeable piece of leftover fabric (which I packed with my fabric stash).

Swishy knee-length skirt from ankle-length horror (it was too cold to model it for you but, trust me, it looks good)

That’s the last I’ll see of my trusty sewing machine for a couple of months; it’s packed in our shipping container and (I hope) on its way to us! My efforts rescued 8 items of clothing – not bad for a couple of hours’ work. I’m particularly happy with Exhibits C and D: my new capri pants and knee-length skirt will be perfect for the warmer climate here in South Africa!

Mend, refashion, donate and/or toss – wouldn’t your wardrobe benefit from a little spring cleaning too?

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…