I’m so excited (and a little bit nervous) to finally reveal my big secret project that I’ve been working on for the past few months. Although I love my amigurumi patterns, I have more to give in the crochet field, so I’ve come up with a new design line: PlanetJune Accessories. Don’t forget to read to the end to take advantage of my launch week discount codes!

I’ve designed my accessories to showcase what I consider to be the beauty and variety of crochet, and also as teaching tools. So don’t feel intimidated if you’ve never moved beyond amigurumi before – my patterns are specifically designed to teach you all the techniques you need to be able to complete them. (For experienced crocheters, the patterns are all modular, so you can save paper and ink by printing only the parts you need, and ignoring the additional instructions if you don’t need them!)

As you probably know, I’m a technical writer and the creator of numerous crochet tutorials, and I love to explain techniques with clear, easy to follow, well-illustrated instructions. You’ll see this in all my amigurumi patterns and the tutorials on this site, and I’ve also carried this through into my Accessories patterns.

All the patterns include full written instructions, photos, illustrations, and charted stitch diagrams where needed, options for right-handers and left-handers (including right- and left-handed stitch diagrams where appropriate), and, as always, are backed up by unlimited support by email, should you have any questions.

For this first PlanetJune Accessories collection, I’ve tried to come up with a mix of designs so there’ll be something to appeal to everyone, and a nice range of options for crocheting gifts for everyone on your Christmas list (and you know it’s coming up fast!).

So now, please allow me to present the PlanetJune Accessories Fall 2010 Collection!

I’d like to start with a FREE taster for you, the Scalloped Scarf. Make this pretty and versatile scarf with almost any yarn you have to hand – it’s a quick and stylish one-skein project, and makes a perfect gift! This pattern is free for you to use, but if you send me a donation in appreciation of my work, you’ll get a handy, easy-to-print PDF version as a thank you.

For the young, and the young at heart, Animal Ears. This no-sew pattern is quick to whip up, and would make a cute basic Halloween costume – all you need is a basic plastic or fabric-covered hairband (I bought mine from the dollar store!), an E hook, and some worsted weight yarn. The pattern includes three ear types: pointed (cat), long (bunny) and round (bear or mouse), and also includes bonus instructions to make the ears individually so you can stitch them onto a basic crocheted hat made in the same colour (and wouldn’t that make a great Christmas gift..?)

For the look of knit but formed with a crochet hook, the Tunisian Stripe Purse. This is a great introduction to Tunisian crochet – all you need is a size J afghan hook or double-ended crochet hook (available in most craft stores) and worsted weight yarn to make this pretty and functional purse. The clever construction means it’s all crocheted – there’s no sewing involved in the assembly! – and, as an added bonus, the sturdy, thick nature of the crocheted fabric means that there’s no need for a fabric lining either. (If you’re new to Tunisian crochet, the pattern comes with 2 bonus PDFs (left-handed and right-handed) including fully illustrated instructions for all the stitches you need for the pattern.)

For the gentlemen in your life (and maybe for yourself too), the Diamond Lattice Neckwarmer. A striking lattice texture that’s bold enough for a man to wear, but isn’t too chunky for ladies, this is a fast project – you can whip one up in an evening – that looks far more complicated than it really is (shh, don’t tell!). This neckwarmer will keep you toasty warm without the length and bulk of a full scarf, and it makes a lovely gift that’s sure to be appreciated. The pattern includes a full stitch diagram as well as clear written instructions. If you’ve never used post stitches before, this pattern is a great introduction to them – you’ll be an expert by the time you’ve completed your first neckwarmer.

And finally, for a touch of elegance, try my two crocheted lace designs: the Gossamer Lace Wrap and the Lacy Bobbles Cowl. Crocheted lace can seem intimidating – my hand was starting to hurt at even the thought of the fine yarns and tiny hooks involved! But it doesn’t have to be like that: my lace patterns are all designed to be worked with normal-sized hooks into the spaces between stitches, which means that, after the foundation row, there’s no hunting for those tiny fine loops to work into, and it’s actually a pleasure to work. (I can report that, as a crocheter with a tendency to suffer from various hand and wrist pains, crocheting the samples for patterns did not cause me any pain, and I’m now a total lace convert!) There are some beautiful laceweight yarns out there – I used baby alpaca for both my designs, which is soft and amazingly warm, but visit your local yarn store to see other options. Don’t be put off by the price, either: you’ll only need one 50g skein of laceweight yarn for each design, so it can actually be very inexpensive. And just look at what you can make:

You can wear the Gossamer Lace Wrap as a beautifully light and lacy shoulder wrap, or as a frothy lace scarf (the layers make it surprisingly toasty as a scarf!). The lace pattern has a 2-row repeat, so you’ll pick it up in no time and be able to enjoy crocheting without having to worry about a complicated pattern.

I designed the Lacy Bobbles Cowl so the lacework isn’t too open, so you can pull it up to cover your head to stay warm, or let the layers of lace pool around your neck. It’s worked in the round, so there’s no need to stitch it together at the end, and the stitch pattern has a clever almost-invisible seam built right into each round.

*****
Launch Week Discounts! (NB the Scalloped Scarf pattern is excluded from these discounts as it’s donationware, so you set your own price anyway)
These automatic discount codes are valid until this Sunday, October 3rd.

Buy any PlanetJune Accessories pattern, save 5% with code PJAC05
Buy any 2 PlanetJune Accessories patterns, save 10% with code PJAC10
Buy any 3 PlanetJune Accessories patterns, save 15% with code PJAC15
Buy any 4 PlanetJune Accessories patterns, save 20% with code PJAC20
Buy all 5 PlanetJune Accessories patterns, save 25% with code PJAC25

You’ll find all the PlanetJune Accessories patterns in my shop.

*****

Okay, now you’ve seen my first Accessories collection, it’s time me to ask you for the scary part: please let me know what you think in the comments! Thank you 🙂

The blog is a little quiet because I’m playing a waiting game at the moment, so I don’t have a lot I can blog about yet:

• Waiting for my new book to be released (less than 6 weeks to go!)
• Waiting to see an advance copy – they should be printed by now and I can’t describe just how nervously excited I am that I’ll soon be able to hold a copy in my hands… (And then I’ll be able to finally share some details with you!)
• Waiting to announce my new secret project that I’m busying away at behind the scenes…
• Waiting to finally complete my 2 new crochet patterns that I’ve been working on for weeks – they expanded in scope far beyond what I originally imagined, so it’s taking much longer than I’d anticipated to write and photograph the instructions.

These yarns have morphed into something special – I hope you’ll agree when I reveal my new designs early next week!

In the meantime, I’m working on so many projects at once, it feels like nothing is getting finished, and I miss that satisfied feeling of having completed a project. It’s made doubly scary as August is always a quiet month for sales (if you have a business, do you find that too, or is it just me?!), so I’m working hard with nothing to show for it yet and not that much money coming in either.

Ah, the perils of self-employment…

Normal service will resume shortly, I’m sure 🙂

July has come and gone, and so it’s time to draw another ‘Review and Win’ winner… July’s winner is Cheryl D, who said:

I used my detail stuffing tool for the first time today… I bought it ages ago and haven’t made any amigurumi lately, (it’s all been big projects and house moves) and when I used it today to make a penguin baby toy, I WAS AMAZED! It’s absolutly brilliant and does exactly what June says it does! Thanks June! You are a GENIUS!!!

Congratulations, Cheryl – you win a free pattern of your choice! (And thanks for the lovely review of my Detail Stuffing Tool too!)

I’ve faced a dilemma about the reviews in my shop and I’d like to explain my thoughts and my decision here, in the interest of transparency. I had my first bad (2 star) review last week, but it transpired that the reviewer hadn’t actually bought the pattern – she was only commenting about her opinion of my design:

This judgement was based on my photos alone – the ‘reviewer’ has not seen the pattern.

When you leave a review in my shop, the purpose is different: a review is there to help other customers to decide whether they should buy the item you’ve reviewed, or not. As such, leaving a review giving your opinion of the look of the finished piece isn’t helpful – you’re not telling the reader anything she can’t see for herself by looking at the photos in my shop! I believe that the only really useful reviews are ones where the reviewer has purchased the pattern and can give an opinion based on reading (or having made) the actual pattern, for example:

• “This is a well-written pattern”
• “I found it really confusing and hard to follow”
• “The step-by-step photos were really helpful”
• “I found a bunch of errors and the designer didn’t reply to any of my emails about them”
• This is the most realistic design I’ve found, and the pattern is very clear

(These comments are for example only, although the positive ones are loosely based on real reviews – I hope nobody will have cause to leave those negative comments about any of my designs!)

Now, whether the rating attached to these is 1 star or 5 stars, or something in between, they all give you valuable information about what you can expect from the pattern, and as such are helpful reviews.

I’ve decided (after a lot of thought) to delete the above 2 star review from my shop, as it will harm my sales but it offers no information that would help anyone else make a purchase decision. In fact, the ‘review’ is actually misleading – when I mentioned it on Twitter, several people assumed she was leaving her review of the pattern itself, as she does say “I like the simplicity of the pattern” (which, let me remind you, she has never seen) – they thought she was saying that the pattern didn’t live up to her expectations and didn’t include enough detail – which would be a valid criticism, except that it’s not true! [FYI, my T rex pattern contains 2 full pages of assembly instructions, including 5 photos – I don’t think anyone could call that a lack of detail!]

If the comment had been posted on my blog instead, I wouldn’t have a problem with it: of course not everyone will like my style! I have no problem with that, or with people telling me that they would like my T Rex design more if it had teeth and claws (for example). But it would insult your intelligence to suggest you need a review to tell you that my design doesn’t include a lot of details like that – you can see for yourself whether you like my design style based on my photos, and choose to buy the pattern (or not) based on your own opinion.

Let me be clear about this: I’m not deleting all negative reviews from my shop! If you truly feel, having bought a pattern, that it deserves 4, 3, 2, or even 1 star, and you explain your reasons for feeling that way in your review, I will leave that review intact for all to see. But reviewing a pattern without ever seeing that pattern is like reviewing a book after just looking at the cover – how could you possibly know what it’s like without even looking inside?!

So, please do continue to review the patterns and products in my shop, but please limit your reviews to items you’ve actually experienced for yourself. The reviews aren’t there for me to read (you can email me or leave me blog comments if you want to tell me your opinions!) – they are there to help others, so please write the sort of information you’d find helpful to read! Thank you 🙂

Since I began selling physical products (safety eyes and noses for amigurumi, stitch markers for crocheters, and Detail Stuffing Tools) in addition to virtual products (PDF patterns and ebooks) I’ve had a new challenge to contend with: packaging. Canada Post has the delightful rule that any packages over 2cm thick cost around 4x as much to ship, so I have to pack carefully to ensure that all my packages are within the 2cm height limit – which can be quite tricky!

I also want to do my part to protect the environment (you’ve probably already guessed this from the subject of most of my designs, but animals and the natural world are really important to me), so I try to follow the ‘environmental 3 Rs’ principle: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

Reduce: I’m continually refining my packaging process to use the least material while still being secure and protecting the contents. I’ve gone from using one sheet of bubble wrap to pack 4 orders, to cutting it in such a way that I can safely package an average of 7 orders using a single sheet of bubble wrap – that’s a big reduction! This little stack will package 12 orders:

Reuse: I do use plastic bubble wrap for packaging because there’s nothing like it for protecting my little goodies as they travel across the world to their destinations, but I don’t feel too bad about that because I advertise locally and collect clean, tape-free bubble wrap from people who’ve just moved house and have bags of it sitting around after unpacking all their ornaments and tableware. (Speaking of which, I’m running low – if anyone around the K-W area has a bunch of bubble wrap going spare, please contact me.) Clever, huh?

Recycle: I use recycled Post-It notes to make the thank you notes I send out with each order.

And this isn’t quite recycling, but it’s a step in the right direction. I went out to replenish my stock of envelopes today, and I made the decision to switch from smart-looking white envelopes to blah-looking kraft coloured envelopes.

I’m hoping that nobody will mind the colour change – it’s just an envelope, after all; you only glance at it for a second before ripping it open and discarding it (into your recycling bin, right??), so how could anyone object?

But the added bonus here is that my new envelopes are FSC certified. Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) certification guarantees that the wood used to produce paper products is taken from responsibly managed forests.

Many species of animals and plants (including my favourite, the orangutan) are at great risk from deforestation, so using FSC certified paper products is an easy way to do your part to help protect the environment – just look out for the FSC logo when you’re shopping.

My envelopes are FSC certified as “Mixed Sources”. The wood used to produce FSC certified products with a “Mixed Sources” label comes from FSC certified well-managed forests, controlled sources and/or recycled material.

This means that, while my envelopes may not be fully recycled, at least their production hasn’t deprived any endangered species of their natural habitat, so you can feel good about ordering your crochet supplies from me! 🙂

I’m just back from my sister’s wedding (which was spectacular); my refashioned shoes held up well and I managed not to trip on my way up the aisle, so we’ll call that a success! It was lovely to see my family, but I really missed being online (other than daily email checks for anything urgent) – how sad is that?! Now I’m trying to pick up the reins of my life and business again, which is surprisingly difficult after a week away from it all…

But look what was waiting for me on my return: new Dinosaur business cards!

What do you think? I’m really pleased with them – they work much better than any of the previous options I was considering. If you order anything that needs shipping (i.e. eyes, noses, stitch markers, and/or Detail Stuffing Tools) from my shop in the near future, you’ll be getting one of these in your package! (And, of course, if you’d like to buy any or all of the Dinosaur crochet patterns, you’ll find them all in the Prehistorical Animals category in my shop.)

And in other news, we’re almost up to the halfway point of the Summer Crochet-along (CAL) on Ravelry.

We already have some excellent completed projects (see below), and many more in progress.

Photo credits: African Violet by bsktkls; Alpacas by rainydaybaby

If you’d like to join in and make an Alpaca or African Violet, there’s still over a month to go, and don’t forget you can get 20% off the cost of the pattern(s) (either or both) if you’re crocheting along – check the CAL instructions to find out how 🙂

Ahh, it’s good to be back!

Don’t forget to enter the contests at the end of this post!

Year 4 Review

The PlanetJune craft blog will be 4 years old tomorrow. It’s hard to believe it; every year has flashed past so quickly! So what exactly have I been doing with myself for the past year? I’ve:

• Designed and published 17 new crochet patterns:



• Self-published my first eBook, The Punchneedle Handbook
• Designed and published 9 punchneedle embroidery patterns:



• Had my pincushion and needlebook patterns published in the book One Yard Wonders
• Somehow managed to find time for some other crafts and tutorials:



• Won the Critter Contest and Craftster’s Best of 2009; nominated for 3 Bobby awards and a Flamie award
• Wrote, photographed and illustrated my upcoming crochet book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Amigurumi

That last item was the biggie that’s occupied most of my time since last summer; writing a 200-page book is no easy task. But it’s finally finished and I can’t wait to be able to see the finished book when it’s released in October!

Tiny Acorns…

I thought I’d take a step back and return to the first post I ever published on this blog (reproduced here in its entirety):

The tiny acorn that became PlanetJune…

When I started PlanetJune, I had a small goal – to inspire creativity by keeping track of my crafts on the blog. From that one small goal I’ve:

• Met the most amazing and inspirational creative people
• Developed the confidence to start designing patterns
• Become an artist and a teacher
• Written and illustrated my first book (with a second book on the way)

…and, in only four years, turned a little crafty hobby into my full-time occupation – something I would never have dreamed could occur when I first set out on this journey. They say to dream big, but dreaming small and having the reality exceed your wildest expectations is pretty special too!

Where Next?

That’s not to say I’m at the point I’d like to be with my business and my creative career. My goal for the coming year is to build my business to the point where I no longer have that niggling feeling that I should really go and get myself a ‘real’ job – a feeling that comes down to the grim reality of earning enough money to continue to support myself. I’m paying my own way at the moment, but I’m far from earning the salary I used to make pre-self-employment. And that’s okay: I’ve changed my lifestyle too; I no longer buy clothes I don’t need or DVDs I’ll never watch. I don’t have any expensive hobbies, and my craft purchases are all business expenses! I do what I love, and I love what I do.

But, to continue to succeed I need to grow and expand the business. I wish I had a crystal ball: I have a lot of exciting ideas, and it’s hard to know where I should invest my time. It’ll be interesting to see where I am by my 5th blogiversary!

Contests

You, my readers, have given me so much support and encouragement along this journey so far, and so I’d like to give something back! I’m running 2 contests:

1. Win any single pattern (your choice) from my store. (FYI, each PocketAmi set counts as one pattern.)
2. Win one of my exclusive Detail Stuffing Tools – a must-have for stuffing amigurumi or small plush toys!

To enter, leave me a comment on this post, including:

1. Your choice of prize – type TOOL or PATTERN
2. Tell me something, e.g. a suggestion for a future design, something you’d like to see on PlanetJune, or a suggestion for how to take my business to the next level. Anything goes – I just want to hear from you!

If you want to enter both contests, just leave me 2 comments!

On Friday 18th June at 5pm EST, I will draw one name from each set of TOOL comments, and one from each set of PATTERN comments. (In the unlikely event that the same person ‘wins’ both, I’ll contact them to see which prize they would prefer, and then draw another name for the other contest winner). Good luck!

Last week, I got a big box in the mail. It contained all the sample projects I made for my book, Paper Chains & Garlands, and shipped off to New York over a year ago to be photographed. It’s so strange to see them again after all this time!

It brought me right back to early 2009, when I was writing the book – it was my first experience of print publishing, after years of self-publishing patterns and writing web-based tutorials. I thought some of you may be interested in hearing a bit more about my experience of writing my first craft book…

The timeline was very tight. I spent my days writing, designing, shopping for paper and tools, and learning more about how to use Adobe Illustrator for the book’s illustrations. Evenings were spent cutting, scoring, folding, gluing. I re-started every time my scissors slipped, because I was not going to have an imperfect sample in my book. I cried in frustration when my hands were too painful to hold the scissors any more, and I had to stop for the evening. I gritted my teeth and went paper shopping yet again when my editor told me that one of my colour schemes wasn’t going to work (when I’d already cut and folded over 100 pieces for the original sample!).

And then, after killing myself making 16 perfect sample garlands (of at least 5 ft long, and some much longer), the photographs in the book are all close-ups (at least my perfectionism paid off there!) and show no more than 1 ft of the garland in most cases, so most of my work was wasted… Although, now I finally have them back, I have ready-made paper decorations for every possible occasion 🙂

All this had faded in my memory, but seeing all the paper projects brought it all back. Please don’t think I’m complaining: it was great experience and an eye-opening introduction to print publishing. The book is a Barnes & Noble exclusive (the big US bookstore chain), so it’s hard for me to gauge how successful it is, when it’s not even available to purchase here in Canada! But I see that its status at bn.com is ‘sold out’, so I assume that’s a good sign! I’ll let you know if/when it’s reprinted and available again.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m very proud of my first craft book and happy to have been given the chance to write it. But let me just say this: if anyone tells you that writing craft books is easy and fun, they may not be telling you the whole truth…

I’m running low on business cards again, so I thought it might be time to try out another new design. I’ve put a few together and I’d love to hear your opinion: Which do you like best? Which (if any) do a good job of representing me and my crochet patterns?

In case you’re wondering why there’s no information on the card, the back of all my cards looks like this:

Here are the three potential designs for your viewing pleasure:

Dinosaurs

Bears

PocketAmi

Please cast your vote in the poll below (check as many options as you like!):

[poll=3]

Anything else to add? Please feel free to leave me a comment too. Don’t worry, I’m not emotionally tied to any of the designs, so criticism won’t upset me. Thank you so much – I really appreciate your opinions!

Edited to add: Please, if you vote ‘None of them!’, let me know in the comments what I could do better! If I don’t know what you don’t like, I won’t know how to fix it…