Don’t miss the Ravellenic Games discount on this pattern until Aug 11 – keep reading for details!

It feels like forever since I designed a new amigurumi mammal – my latest designs have all been plants, birds, and reptiles – so I had to get back to my PlanetJune roots and make a new cute and realistic amigurumi animal for you. And here’s the result: my Raccoon crochet pattern!

Raccoon Fun Facts

• Raccoons are naturally found throughout North America, but they’ve also been introduced into Europe and Japan.
• They are named for their dexterous hands, from the Algonquian word aroughcun. At night, they can ‘see’ their food by touch.
• Raccoons are very adaptable and thrive in both wild and urban environments. As omnivores, they can eat any available food.
• Urban raccoons are nicknamed ‘masked bandits’ and (my favourite) ‘trash pandas’ for their black face markings and habit of scavenging garbage!

About the Design

I’m shocked it’s taken this long for me to design a raccoon pattern – I’ve had a soft spot for trash pandas since we first moved to Canada and had occasional raccoon visitors to our birdfeeders, and once a litter of adorable babies playing on the garage roof!

My very old photos, from 2006-7 (sorry about the quality – this was before the days of cellphone cameras with low-light modes!)

Before I started this design, I thought it’d be pretty easy – cross the colours of my Badger with the markings of my Red Panda, and boom! instant Raccoon! – but every single part of the Raccoon needed to be a different shape and size from my previous patterns, so I didn’t get to take any shortcuts with this pattern 😀

The iconic striped tail gives you a perfect opportunity to practice my Ultimate Stripes technique. (I also include alternatives in the pattern, if you prefer speed to perfection.)

And although the all-important face mask has detailed colour changes, they’re limited to just 5 rounds, and the rest of the pattern is fast and easy, with realistic shaping built right in.

In real life, raccoons can come in many shades of grey and brown. I chose to make mine pale grey, and used a very dark grey instead of black for the mask to help the eyes stand out. But you can go with the classic black/white/grey combo, or make a raccoon with a warmer colouring by using a warm grey or even brown for the main colour and cream or off-white for the face. That’s one of the great things about amigurumi: it’s so easy to make a unique animal just by choosing different yarn colours!

Buy Now

Are you ready to get started on your Raccoon? If so, you can pick up the Raccoon amigurumi crochet pattern right now from my shop (but check for the discount below first!)

Or, if you’re not quite ready to buy, why not favourite/queue it on Ravelry so you don’t forget about it?

Ravellenic Games Discount!

The 2024 Ravellenic Games start this Friday! If you’d like to challenge yourself to crochet anything from any of my patterns during the timeframe of the Olympic Games (July 26 – Aug 11 2024), join Team PlanetJune and compete along with us to earn virtual medals and laurel awards.

If you’d like to make a Raccoon for Team PlanetJune, look out for the exclusive Team PJ discount code in the Ravelry or Discord PlanetJune Community groups.

From this year, I’ll be awarding our team laurels via the new Team PlanetJune microsite, where you’ll find all the info for how to join, plus links to the Team PJ project archives for every games since 2012! (If you don’t use Ravelry, you can still join in via the Team PJ site and I’ll award all your Team PJ laurels, but note that you’ll only be eligible for event medals if you cross the official Ravellenic Games finish lines on Ravelry.)

Whether or not you decide to join us for the Rav Games, I hope you’ll enjoy my Raccoon pattern! And if you make a raccoon, I’d love to see it – please share it in one of the PJ groups, or tag me (I’m @planetjune on all the socials) if you post a pic anywhere else 🙂

Over the past couple of years, I’ve fallen out of the blogging habit. After my seclusion while writing The Essential Guide to Amigurumi, I found it difficult to get back into the comfortable swing of sharing things online.

I’ve been putting way too much pressure on myself to make things perfect, and trying to figure out what it means to be ‘professional’ without losing myself and what’s important to me. Posting online used to be easy, but then my anxious brain got in the way with thoughts that I may be old and irrelevant in today’s fast-paced and noisy social media landscape.

Then I remembered: blogging is the way I always enjoyed sharing – it’s slower, more thoughtful, higher quality and longer-lasting than social media. And I don’t (and won’t ever) have ads on my site, so visiting my blog can be a calming respite from the visual assault of endless ads and auto-playing videos – for me as well as you.

So, I’m going to try to relax and start posting here more frequently again, sharing my creative pursuits and what I’m enjoying. That’s mostly crochet and other crafts, with an occasional post about wildlife and nature, growing food in my garden, cooking/baking, and whatever else I find interesting!

I won’t be consistent – as always with me, I’ll only publish things when they’re ready. But I can tell you that I hope to have somewhere between a couple and a few posts per month, depending on my energy and other commitments.

I have lots of projects to catch you up on, so I hope you’ll join me in the coming months for my crochet content, explorations of different crafts, garden experiments, and behind-the-scenes posts about what it actually takes to write and publish a craft book like EGA!

Choose Your Options

You can hear from me and engage as much or as little as you like. Here are the ways you can stay connected:

• All the Blog Posts: If this sounds good, please subscribe to the blog now, and all my posts will be sent directly to your inbox in future so you’ll never miss another post!
• Just the Crochet (Newsletter): If you’re only here for my crochet content, please don’t subscribe to this blog. My monthly(ish) newsletter includes all my crochet-related news for the month including any relevant blog posts, so you’ll never miss out on any new patterns, tutorials or tips I have for you, without the other topics.
• Join In: If you’d like to share about your crafting, reading, cooking, gardening, pets, and life with other positive, friendly, crafty people, I highly recommend you join us in the PlanetJune Discord server! It’s our private ad-free space for text chatting and sharing pics. I find it’s a beautiful antidote to the noise of what social media has become, and our small group gives you a chance to make real connections and friendships with other like-minded souls.

So, hello again, and welcome if you’re new here! I’m really looking forward to sharing more of myself with you again. I hope you’ll enjoy my upcoming posts, and please do comment from time to time if you do – knowing you’re out there will be really encouraging as I try to get back into the swing of blogging…