I’m updating my entire back catalogue of patterns with extra information and tips and a new space-saving layout, and re-releasing them in batches as they are ready. Please see Crochet Pattern Re-Releases for more information.

Today, I’ve re-released all the AmiDogs patterns, so the new versions of any you’ve previously purchased are ready for you to download! Log back into your PlanetJune account at any time in the next 2 weeks, and you’ll see the download buttons for all your past AmiDogs pattern purchases have been re-enabled so you can click and download the new versions.

Free Collar Pattern

From today forwards, all AmiDogs patterns will now come with a free bonus 1-page PDF with instructions for crocheting a simple but effective collar for your dogs, pictured below. This pattern is a separate download (automatically included with each order), so, if you buy more than one AmiDogs pattern, you need only download the collar pattern once – it’s the same pattern for all the dogs.

The new collar pattern. And, ooh, look – a sneak peek of AmiDogs #21, Scottish Terrier! Stay tuned: the Scottie Dog pattern will be coming tomorrow 😉

Now, what I didn’t realise until a moment ago was that your previous orders can’t be updated to include the free collar pattern – oops. So here’s what I’m going to do:

• I’m putting the Collar pattern up as Donationware for $1 in the shop, but I don’t expect you to pay for it. (If you want to send me a donation, of course that’s always appreciated, but that’s not my intention here.)
• If you plan to buy more AmiDogs, please just wait until you order your dog pattern(s), and you’ll get the collar pattern automatically.
• If you’ve bought all the AmiDogs you want but would like the Collar pattern to go with them, please email me within the next 2 weeks and include the order number of a previous order that included an AmiDogs pattern (you’ll find the number in your order confirmation email, and in your list of orders in My Account). I’ll email you back with a $1 discount code off the Collar pattern, so you can ‘buy’ it for a dollar with a $1 discount, i.e. you’ll be able to get it for free.

Sorry it’s a bit convoluted! But it should work 🙂

Don’t Miss your Free Updates

Never miss the two-week pattern re-release window: sign up for the Crochet Pattern Updates mailing list. This list is just for pattern re-release announcements, and, if you sign up for it, you’ll get a short email notification every time a new batch of patterns has been re-released and is ready to download (no more than one or two emails per month until the reformat project is complete).

Missing Orders

Once a pattern has been re-released, all new orders for that pattern will automatically receive the updated version, and, if you’ve already bought the pattern, you can download the re-release for no additional charge from your PlanetJune account. But not all orders are there – here are a few reasons why you may have received patterns by email instead:

• You commissioned a pattern.
• You won a pattern (through ‘Review and Win’, a CAL prize, etc).
• You ordered patterns prior to July 2008 (when I replaced my PayPal shopping cart with my fully-featured shop).
• You ordered patterns through Etsy (or another online storefront).

If any of these (or another reason) apply to you, you can still get your pattern re-releases! I just need a few details from you so I can set up a dummy order in your PlanetJune account, including all your ‘missing’ patterns. I do not have time to email re-releases to anyone; if you want the new versions you must email me so I can set up your dummy order, or re-purchase them.

Instructions for Missing Orders:

1. Make a list of all your PlanetJune patterns that do not show in your PlanetJune account (one per line, please) together with where you bought/won them (for each pattern, just put Etsy, commission, which contest, etc). I need this info so I can verify your purchases.
   • Tip: to quickly see all your PlanetJune Etsy orders, click this link: Search for all planetjune purchases in your Etsy account
2. If you don’t already have a PlanetJune account, create one now.
3. Email me (that’s To: june@planetjune.com, Subject: Missing Patterns) and include:
   • The list of your missing patterns and where you bought/won them from
   • If you ordered through Etsy, your Etsy username
   • The email address you use to login to your PlanetJune account (if different to the one you’re emailing me from)

Depending on demand, it may take me a while to input all these dummy orders! I have no idea how many people will take me up on this offer, but there are potentially thousands of orders to input, so please be patient if it takes me a while to get to yours. I’ll verify and process them when I have time, and they will all be ready by the time all my patterns have been updated and re-released. At that point, I’ll unlock all your orders so you can re-download the updates.

If you send your email quickly, I’ll be able to process it before I get swamped with requests, and you’ll be able to download your patterns as soon as I complete each batch of re-releases. Please do get your list to me as soon as you can.

Phew! Okay, that’s it for today; I’ll be back tomorrow with the Scottie pattern! Until then, enjoy your new and improved AmiDogs 😀

Review: e-magazines

I’ve only bought 2 or 3 crochet magazines over the past few years; to me they are expensive to buy, hard to find, and awkward to store. Now I know about digital magazines, though, I’ve changed my mind. I can read the latest magazines on my tablet and PC without the problem of storing years of back issues or having to throw out old issues to make room for new ones. Availability is a huge plus too: you can buy e-magazines from anywhere in the world for the same price, whereas finding the printed magazines outside North America is difficult and expensive, and you can download the latest issues as soon as they are released.

I hadn’t even heard of Zinio, a digital magazine provider, until they offered me some subscriptions to give away last month. My concern about e-magazines was that my magazines may be tied to one device, but, I can log into my Zinio account from all my devices (I have a desktop PC, laptop and Nexus 7 tablet) and download my subscriptions to any/all of them at no additional cost. That also means if I lose or replace a device, I won’t have lost my magazines, as they’ll all still be available from my account.

Now I can enjoy an e-mag while I crochet

I’ve really been enjoying the subscriptions Zinio gave me, and I wanted to let you know that, if you didn’t win my contest (or even if you did!), today (January 7th) is the last day to take advantage of their holiday sale. These are such great deals I couldn’t resist, so I just treated myself to another year’s subscription each of Crochet Today! and Interweave Crochet – only $10 for a whole year of one of these crochet magazines is a real bargain:

Update: As of today (Jan 14), Crochet Today! is still only $10 for an annual subscription 🙂

If you’re interested, click on the magazine cover photos above, and they’ll take you straight through so you can buy a subscription at Zinio. These are affiliate links, so I’ll make a few cents from your purchase, but this is a genuine recommendation – $10 for a year of each of these magazines seems like too good a deal to pass up, and I didn’t want you to miss out if you’d like to take advantage before this crazy sale ends today!

Pet-Along CAL

The January crochet-along is going well: we’re making pet animals this month, and we already have amigurumi dogs, hamsters, bunnies, an alpaca, and a gecko entered! Most of the pattern options are below – they’re all available from my shop except the Hamsters, which you’ll find in my book.

You can find the CAL details, and a bonus CAL discount on the PocketAmi Pets pattern, in the PlanetJune Ravelry group…
 

Review and Win contest

December’s ‘Review and Win’ winner is Nicole D, with her review of my Fuzzy Guinea Pig:

Perfection! A true embodiment of a guinea pig. Your little guy will come to life under your fingers, his shape forming readily with each stitch. He has bumps in all the right places and the loveable guinea bottom all owners come to adore.

I made one of these for my sister in law after her guinea pig passed and he elicited a squeal of excitement, a cuddle and easily an hour laminating on how lifelike he looks.

June’s pattern is remarkably easy to follow and contains everything you need to know to craft yourself a new friend.

Congrats Nicole – I’ll email you to find out which pattern you’d like as your prize 🙂

What an amazing year 2012 has been! Even though I’ve been exceedingly busy behind the scenes, when I look at all my 2012 patterns, I feel like I’ve made a lot of artistic progress in my designs this year too:

PlanetJune 2012 crochet patterns

In 2012…

• I created 25 new crochet patterns – a mix of animals, plants, geometric, accessories, commissions, and donationware. All different, and yet, somehow, all very me. Seeing them all together like this makes me feel accomplished!
• As part of my goal to create the essential online go-to reference, I created 9 new video tutorials, 7 photo tutorials, and a handy one-page index for all my crochet tutorials at www.planetjune.com/help 🙂
• I launched the PlanetJune logo and redesigned my blog to make it clearer and easier to use. (The homepage and shop redesigns have been shifted to the 2013 list…)
• I began refreshing my entire pattern catalogue with new clearer formatting, more details, and additional tips where they’d be beneficial. (Sign up for the pattern updates list if you’d like to be notified when you can download the updated versions of any patterns you’ve purchased!)

Personal Report

Without going into too much detail, living as a visitor in a foreign country (as opposed to a temporary resident, as I was when we first moved to Canada) is not at all easy. Being treated as a dependent wife instead of a person in my own right is endlessly frustrating; I can’t even do the most basic things (buy a phone, open a bank account, get a library card, etc) in my own name. I’m sure all this contributed to the stress-induced eczema I developed this year, which is complicating my life even further.

It’s not all bad though; the wildlife situation here is spectacular and we’ve had many wonderful nature experiences this year, as well as the small daily pleasures of our garden full of birds, butterflies and lizards. (If you’re interested, you can look back on my year of monthly nature posts.) And, if you’ve been missing my photos, I have good news: I’ve been saving up my photos of all the new animals and birds we’ve seen since my last nature post, and I’ll be doing a big South African wildlife update in the near future, so you can enjoy it too!

Business Report

2012 was all about building for the future: a growing business is a wonderful thing, but you have to be able to cope with the growth. To that end, I’m trying to improve everything so the business will run itself as much as possible, and my customers will be able to easily find answers to all their questions without having to ask me for personal help.

I never imagined that PlanetJune would get this far, but, aside from a slight blip when I moved halfway around the world, my business has grown by 1.5x per year, every year since 2007. I’m sure that growth can’t continue indefinitely – I don’t know of any millionaire crochet pattern designers, so there must be a ceiling! – but, through years of very hard work and some luck, I’ve built a serious business here.

Of course, this business growth brings its own challenges: as sales increase, so does the amount of admin and tech support required. To provide the same level of service to all my customers, I have to put in 50% more time each year – not a desirable or sustainable situation! I discussed this in my post on Beating Craft Business Overwhelm and I’m working on the strategies I outlined there. (And there’s a technical growth side too: I didn’t think I’d ever hit my huge 1TB/month bandwidth limit, but that happened this year, so I had to upgrade my server to cope with all that traffic.)

Looking back
Here’s what I said in last year’s review:

My resolution for 2012 is to work smarter, not harder. I need to slow down and enjoy life, not let it pass me by while I’m working non-stop. I want to invest time into things that will, in the long run, save me time in the technical and administrative sides of the business, leaving me with a larger proportion of time to spend on the creative and instructional sides, and having a life apart from my work.

Did that work? Yes and no. I’ve totally failed on the ‘slowing down and enjoying life’ part, but that was primarily because I’ve been focusing on the other part of the resolution: investing time in things that will save me time in the long run – putting the work in now that will save me endless work in future years.

Although this project is still ongoing, I’ve spent many weeks of 2012 wearing my web-developer hat and coding new PlanetJune features:

• A system to manage pattern commissions.
• A way to automatically re-enable pattern downloads when updates are available.
• A system for adding ‘dummy’ orders into the shop so people who didn’t originally order through the shop can still receive pattern updates.
• An order-fulfillment mechanism for Etsy orders so I won’t need to email patterns by hand any more. (Created, but not yet implemented.)

I’ve also implemented many smaller changes to streamline and automate the business, such as:

• The Master List for all my crochet tutorials, which has already proven to be an amazingly useful resource.
• A ‘triage’ system of rules for incoming emails (referrals to my tutorials, FAQ, or sellers’ list; a bank of standard responses to common questions; new policies such as not replying to any questions not written in English or providing support for patterns written by other people).
• Improved spam-blockers that reduced the spam I have to check from approx 800/day to approx 2/day (a huge time-saver!)

And, because you can’t work all the time and stay sane, I taught myself to knit, and made some stuff for fun:

My 2012 craft projects

What’s next?

Well, I’m still moving towards the goal where the business more-or-less runs itself and I’m free to design, innovate, and teach, and enjoy life without working all the time. Although I had hoped all the big automation and coding projects would be completed this year, that wasn’t realistic – probably because I keep adding to the list and coming up with more ideas! But the pieces I’ve already set in motion have made a huge difference to my workload, so I’m moving in the right direction.

I hope by next year’s review I really will have completed all my big tech goals, and then I’ll have more time to explore some of my other creative ideas – I have plans for online classes and ebooks that I don’t have a hope of finding time to create at the moment (but I’m writing everything down, so my notes will be waiting for me when I have time to get to them!)

This past year, I’ve worked harder than I ever have in my life – I’m essentially working 3 large jobs now: Designer (and photographer, editor, blogger, etc), Administrator (order processing, customer and tech support, etc), and Programmer (web developer, back-end tech support, server manager, etc). But the big goal here is worth it: to transition my business from a very hands-on one-person business to an automated one-person business, so I can spend the majority of my work time creating new designs and tutorials.

This interim stage is hard going, but I’m trying to do something here that (possibly) no other craft business has done: to grow past the one-person level without expanding or outsourcing. I’m hoping that all my automation strategies will pay off in 2013, and I’ll have a virtual assistant (in the form of my own website and systems reducing my workload) instead of having to hire an actual assistant.

Although I anticipate another year of very hard work behind the scenes of PlanetJune, I’m giving this plan one more year to succeed. If it doesn’t, I’d have to either find a way to scale back my business, or take on minions (unless I can come up with another alternative, as neither of those options appeal to me). But for now I’ll think positive: I can make this work!

On the creative side, I’m very excited about the coming year: I have loads of sketches for new designs that I’m looking forward to transforming into crochet; several design series I’ve already started prototyping; and some brand new concepts for design themes that I’m eager to research. I can’t wait to get stuck into some of my new ideas after the holidays…

Thank you so much for continuing to follow me on this journey – your support makes a huge difference to me. Although I know I’ll have some challenges this year, I’m really looking forward to 2013, and I hope you are too.

Happy New Year!