This extended 6-week CAL theme was Dino-Mania including my 9 original dinosaur patterns and the 9 new expansion pack patterns:

Those are my 18 dinos; now take a look at the Dino-Mania CAL roundup – it’s an explosion of colour! I hope you’ll love seeing all these dinosaurs together as much as I do…

Just a mini-CAL roundup this month, as the main Accessory-Along is in full swing for the rest of the year, so a few people decided to whip up some Halloweeny amigurumi in the meantime as a bonus October CAL.

For November, we’ll be continuing the Accessory-Along, and also having an amazing Dino-Mania CAL! I hope you’ll join us – it’s going to be fun. (If you’d like to take part in one – or both! – see the end of this post for more details.)

And now for the Halloween roundup!
(For speed, I just give credit with participants’ Ravelry usernames.)

CraftinMama & CrochetChrisie

MagicalAmigurumi & CrochetChrisie

Fatals-attraction & klopferli

aaBrink & daveslady

nakedorangie, AKmtnnymph, & MagicalAmigurumi

It’s a case of quality, not quantity, for this roundup 🙂 I do love seeing everyone’s creative spin on my patterns.

November CAL: it’s going to be Dino-Mania!

I have high hopes for this month’s Dino-Mania CAL – it should be so much fun! Join us making Dinosaurs galore – with 18 designs to choose from now, I can’t wait to see all the dinosaurs that’ll be made, and what colours people will choose…

And the Accessory-Along runs until the end of December and is going strong so far – my new Frosty Windows scarf is proving especially popular! Take a look at all the pretty scarves (and shawls, cowls, etc) that have already been finished and posted in the CAL thread and maybe you’ll be inspired to join in and make one too…

We’d love to welcome you to the PlanetJune ravelry group for the CALs, as well as for pattern support, new pattern suggestions, and chat – we have over 1000 members now, and it’s a fun, friendly and supportive place to hang out 🙂

This extended 6-week CAL was a BotaniCAL including all my patterns that fit the botanic theme (flowers, plants, fruits etc):

For October, the Ravelry group have decided to have two CALs: the main Accessory-Along, and a bonus Halloween CAL. (If you’d like to take part in one – or both! – see the end of this post for more details.)

The 2012 Olympic Games, and the yarny Ravellenic Games, have now drawn to a close. I’d like to salute all the members of Team PlanetJune, for participating through competing and/or cheerleading.

Team PlanetJune roll call: abjCrochet, AKmtnnymph, AliciaLee418, anda76, arbitrarily, BanuyeGharbi, BettyH553, BiologyJAP, BryansMummy, camaharet, celloulee, CrochetChrisie, CrochtColorJunkie, Emzibee, Enphra, esmerelda33, Fatals-attraction, Foxtrot400, Grendy05, haleysuzanne, hattalahutta, Heidi, HotPinkCrayola, JennHanus, jukatca, JRPautos, klopferli, Luna1130, MintSauce, MorganAdel, petrOlly, planetjune, PinkytheLizard, PixyKayte, rastakt, robinandersen9, saudistitcher, SugarAngel, taliasparkle, theMarkofSMB, themegababe, tripleb, Veggie, vshopmeyer, yaney, yasminlangley

Team PlanetJune Medals:

Overall, we attained 90 medals in 16 different events – an amazing achievement!

Photo Gallery

I’ll show you my entries first so I can explain them quickly. The Kingfisher is a replacement for my original that was lost after I sent it to be photographed by a magazine. I’m so glad to have finally had a chance to remake him:

And my other entries were new designs: the (as yet unnamed) scarf will be a new PlanetJune Accessories donationware pattern next month, and the Sea Otter is a commissioned design (pattern coming very soon!):

Here are all the other team entries – notice how people have challenged themselves through quantity of projects, making more advanced accessories, completing old WIPs, or modifying my patterns to include beading, felting, miniaturising, and more…

Luna1130 & hattalahutta

PinkytheLizard & theMarkofSMB

hattalahutta & theMarkofSMB

CrochetChrisie & HotPinkCrayola

Fatals-attraction & CrochetChrisie

theMarkofSMB & petrOlly

CrochetChrisie & AKmtnnymph

Fatals-attraction & CrochetChrisie

theMarkofSMB & abjCrochet

arbitrarily & Enphra

CrochetChrisie & hattalahutta

arbitrarily & tripleb

tripleb & Fatals-attraction

PinkytheLizard & theMarkofSMB

rastakt & theMarkofSMB

theMarkofSMB & SugarAngel

CrochetChrisie & BettyH553

theMarkofSMB & themegababe

petrOlly & petrOlly

Fatals-attraction & theMarkofSMB

CrochetChrisie & Fatals-attraction

CrochetChrisie & klopferli

camaharet & PinkytheLizard

petrOlly & theMarkofSMB

yaney & petrOlly

petrOlly & jukatca

theMarkofSMB & Fatals-attraction

themegababe & BettyH553

Veggie, CrochetChrisie & PinkytheLizard

BanuyeGharbi, MorganAdel & Luna1130

yaney, BiologyJAP & CrochetChrisie

Isn’t that an impressive collection? (Both in terms of quality and quantity: remember, these were all made within the just over 2 week timeframe…) Excellent work, team! 🙂

Prizes!

Thanks to Michelle of Suncatcher Eyes for sponsoring Team PlanetJune! In addition to her beautiful handpainted eyes, Michelle carries a full range of high quality black and clear animal eyes for your amigurumi.

All eligible projects were entered in the draw, and the six winners are:

• $10 gift certificate for the PlanetJune shop: PinkyTheLizard
• A free pattern of your choice from PlanetJune: hattalahutta, klopferli
• 10 pairs of eyes (your choice of colours and sizes) from Suncatcher Eyes: theMarkofSMB
• 5 pairs of eyes (your choice of colours and sizes) from Suncatcher Eyes: petrOlly, SugarAngel

Congratulations to the winners – I’ll rav PM you to sort out your prizes!

All other Team PJ members with projects pictured above will receive the runner-up prize of a PlanetJune discount coupon (I’ll send it as a rav PM, so look out for it there!)

I’m sure the whole team would also like to extend a special thanks to our co-Captain, CrochetChrisie, who helped answer everyone’s questions about the Ravellenic Games rules and took the pressure off me – there’s no way I could have managed the admin for this by myself! To show my gratitude, I’m awarding Chrisie with a surprise gift – Chrisie, it’ll be in the mail shortly 🙂

Competing for medals in the Ravellenic Games was fun, but a little stressful too! If you’d like to participate in a more relaxed no-pressure crochet-along, join us in the PlanetJune Ravelry group for the BotaniCAL from now until the end of September – we’re crocheting beautiful flowers, plants and fruit…

This extended 6-week CAL was a Free-For-All, so participants had free choice to make any PlanetJune patterns they wanted (amigurumi, accessories, free patterns, patterns from my book). It’s interesting that with 120 patterns to choose from, you can see some definite trends in what people chose to crochet, but also loads of variety.

Now it’s time for me to take a short break while I visit my parents.

The next CAL will be the Ravellenic Games, from July 27th to August 12th. I’d like to invite you to join Team PlanetJune! (See the end of this post for more details.)

This month’s CAL was a Wildlife-Along, so there were lots of patterns to choose from:

…which led to a lovely variety of FOs (Finished Objects) from the CAL participants this month.

Don’t forget to keep reading to the end of this post for details of the next CAL – starting tomorrow!

Ready to visit the amigurumi zoo? Let’s see the roundup…

The challenge with the Pocket-Along CAL was to either crochet animals from my pocket-sized patterns, or to miniaturize any of my other patterns by using fine yarn and a tiny hook. What I wasn’t expecting was how many people would do both – take the pocket-sized patterns and shrink them even further! You’ll see a lot of photos here with the crocheter’s hand for scale – most of the entries are keyring-sized, and in fact, you’ll see several with keychains attached.

For the first time this month, I’ve asked participants to follow my new guidelines for CAL photo submissions. By having all the photos supplied at a standard 4:3 ratio, I was able to write some code that will automatically generate all the photos and participant credits below – you can’t imagine how much time this will save me over time, with one of these roundup posts to write every month! (I should mention that my code orders the entries randomly, so don’t look for any patterns here.)

Don’t forget to keep reading to the end of this post for details of the May CAL – starting tomorrow!

Now onto the roundup…

Welcome to BunnyFest 2012! Okay, this is actually the Easter CAL roundup, but I’ve never seen a pattern catch the imagination of so many people so quickly the way my Baby Bunnies design has – as you’ll see from this roundup, crocheted bunnies are taking over the world this year.

It’s so much fun to see how people are putting their own twists on my pattern to create all kinds of different bunnies. But let’s look at the other CAL entries first, and I’ll save the bunny gallery for the end! Here goes…