I really hope you’ll enjoy my latest crochet design – it makes me smile to see these cheery colourful pansy faces, and I hope they’ll give you a happy boost too! Depending on your climate, pansies can be among the earliest flowering plants in spring, but you don’t even need to wait that long to add colour to your day…

My Pansies pattern includes large and small baskets of realistic pansy plants, together with 4 different styles of pansy flowers, each available to crochet in all the pansy colours, giving you dozens of options!

You can customize the basket contents to mix and match the pansy flowers however you wish. The small basket includes 2 pansy plants, and the large basket has 8, for a riot of glorious colour.

This pattern also includes bonus instructions for making any of the pansy styles into an individual leaf-backed pansy flower (as shown at the start of this post) – perfect as a decorative pin, appliqué, gift topper or ornament.

The word pansy is derived from the French pensée (‘thought’) and there’s no better way to show someone you’re thinking of them than with a cheerful crocheted pansy.

Pattern Details

Don’t be phased by the apparent complexity of this pattern – I’ve put a lot of thought into making it easy and enjoyable for you to make:

• Although the pansy flower is a little more complex than my other flowers, it’s explained with written instructions, stage-by-stage photos, and right- and left-handed stitch diagrams. And once you’ve made a couple, they work up pretty quickly.
• Yes, the baskets have quite a lot of leaves, but I’ve come up with a clever construction method for them so you won’t be crocheting each leaf individually. It’s a lot faster than you’d think from looking at the finished result (shh, don’t tell!)
• The complete pattern includes 16 pages and dozens of photos for constructing the flowers and assembling the pansies in both sizes of basket, so I’ll walk you step-by-step through the whole process – no need to be intimidated. 🙂
• The pages with the crochet instructions for each of the three options (large pansy basket, small pansy basket, pansy pin/appliqué) are listed within the pattern, so, if desired, you can save paper and ink by printing only the pages required for your option, and read the assembly instructions on-screen only.

Launch Discount

Although I always offer discounts for shopping directly from PlanetJune, to spread the joy even further, I’m offering an additional 10% discount for one week only. Just enter code HAPPY at checkout by next Monday, 22nd February 2016, and the extra discount will be applied.

Buy the pattern here in my shop. Or, if you’re not ready to buy just yet, please heart or queue it on Ravelry so you don’t forget about it:

Promise of Spring CAL

And finally, to brighten your cold February days (or possibly your hot and dry days for us southern hemispherers…), join us in the PlanetJune group on Ravelry to crochet pansies and other happy PlanetJune plants and flowers.

This CAL runs from now until the end of March, so you should have plenty of time to make even the most ambitious crocheted floral arrangement. I hope you’ll join us and share in the colourful botanical joy!

I’ve had a bit of a disaster this week: I just discovered that a big online reputation company flagged me as a potential spammer, which has led to lots of automated emails from @planetjune.com addresses being blocked by many email providers before they had a chance to reach your mailbox.

Unsubscribe vs Mark as Spam

I’m very careful with the email addresses entrusted to me and I’d never send unsolicited email or share your email address with anyone else.

The most likely reason I got into this situation is that people who no longer wanted my email newsletter marked it as Spam instead of unsubscribing. I get it – we’re all drowning in email these days! But if you’ve had enough emails from a business you subscribe to, please use the Unsubscribe link in the email. Don’t mark anything as Spam unless it’s email you never requested.

Are You Missing Email?

Now I know about this, I’ve contacted the company and they’ve fixed my reputation, so PlanetJune emails won’t be blocked any more. The remaining problem is that this has been in play since early December, so there are several types of email that may not have got through to you between then and now. These could be important emails, for example if:

• You ordered with PayPal Express Checkout and haven’t received your account password
• You asked my shop for a new password and it never arrived
• You signed up for my mailing list but haven’t received the confirmation email
• You pledged towards a commission but haven’t received the confirmation email

What to do…

If any of the above scenarios apply, here’s how to resolve your problem:

• If you need a password for your PlanetJune account, click here, enter your email address, and my shop will send you a new temporary password. Check your Spam if you don’t see the password within a minute or two. And, once you’ve logged in, go to ‘My Account’ and change your password to something you’ll remember.
• If you signed up for my mailing list but didn’t receive a confirmation email, please click here and sign up again. The confirmation should arrive almost immediately – check your Spam if you don’t see it within a minute or two.
• If you made a pledge towards a design commission but a) haven’t received the confirmation email or b) the pledge doesn’t show on your list of pledges, please make a new pledge here. Your confirmation email should arrive almost immediately – check your Spam if you don’t see it within a minute or two.

Problems?

If you still don’t receive the email you expect, or have any other problems with your interactions with PlanetJune, please feel free to email me directly at any time. If there’s a problem, I want to fix it, and I can’t do that if I don’t know about it!

Thanks for your understanding, and please know that I’m always ready and willing to help if you have any PlanetJune-related problems, now or in the future.

Changing Plans

I’ve spent most of January working on a beautiful new plant-in-a-pot design, which I’d intended to release by today. It’s a big pattern, with lots of options and tips, but when I looked at everything together, although the pattern was great, the design itself wasn’t quite as perfect as I’d like…

I try to spot these things before I’ve completed a 16-page pattern so I don’t have to redo too much work, but that just didn’t happen in this case. The design is very close, but it’ll take a lot of crocheting and re-writing to make the small tweak the design needs to be really special.

Rather than hurry to get the pattern finished, I decided to postpone the release date by 2 weeks, to take the pressure off myself and make sure I’m 100% satisfied with the design before it goes public and am making decisions about what’s best for the final pattern, not what I can manage in the available time.

It’s disappointing to have to change plans, but now I’ve had time to adjust I’m glad I made this decision. As I enter my 10th year(!) of crochet design, it’s becoming even clearer that each new design I add to my pattern catalogue has to be my best work. One standout new design adds far more value to my business in the course of time than I’d get from producing ten mediocre patterns – and there are no shortcuts if you want to end up with something extra-special.

PlanetJune on Instagram

For 2016, I’ve finally joined Instagram!

If you’re on Instagram too:

• See behind-the-scenes snippets of my work and life (like my first IG pics, above!) by following me @PlanetJune
• Show off your pics of the lovely things you’ve made from my patterns by tagging them with the hashtag #planetjune

Hearts & Flowers CAL

Postponing my new pattern release has left us with time to enjoy a quick pre-Valentine’s Day crochet-along – I hope you’ll join in by making beautiful hearts and roses from my free (donationware) patterns…

Love Hearts and Basic Rose are both fast to work up so I hope you’ll have time to join in – even if it’s just to make one tiny Love Heart (5 mins start to finish!)

Both the CAL patterns are available for free, but donations are always very much appreciated (and you’ll get the nicely-formatted PDF file as a thank you for your donation of any size).

Sounds good? Crochet-along with us between now and Feb 14th in the PlanetJune Ravelry group 🙂

Review and Win contest

You’re automatically entered in the next monthly draw every time you write a review for a PlanetJune pattern you’ve enjoyed – and you’ll also be helping future customers make an informed decision about patterns they are considering buying.

It’s time for a big catch-up today, as I didn’t post monthly updates in December or January, so I have 3 winners to draw!

November’s winner is Linda S‘s review of my Sea Otter pattern:

This is the sweetest little guy, and he was fun to make. Before I buying, I compared it to similar patterns and he came out way on top. I recommend this pattern.

December’s winner is Elizabeth L‘s review of my Cactus Collection 1 & 2 patterns:

Everything a pattern should be! Simple and easy to follow with beautiful results! I always had problems with French knots but June’s explanation took care of that.

And finally, January’s winner is Josh C‘s review of my AmiCats Tuxedo pattern (far right in the above pic):

All of June’s pattern’s I’ve tried so far have been well written and they all produce a realistic result, but this cat really impressed me. I’m not sure what amazed me more – the fact that the finished cat body actually includes contours and curves exactly where you’d expect them to be on a real cat (like the hind legs, or the arch in its back), or the method for joining the front legs to the body (no sewing required, you crochet them straight onto the body…and the tops of the legs just disappear into the body, leaving literally no seam at all)

It took me a while to complete but the finished product was 100% worth it.

Congratulations, Linda, Elizabeth and Josh – I’ve emailed you all to find out which pattern you’d each like as your prize!

What’s Next?

Full steam ahead with perfecting my new plant pattern and preparing the Promise of Spring CAL to begin on Feb 15th. After that, I’ll be able to make a start on my last fully-pledged commission – yay!