Twist-Trim Baby Blanket is the latest addition to my PlanetJune Accessories pattern range.

An easy-to-memorise 2-row repeating pattern with a subtle texture and no large holes make this blanket fast to work up as a baby blanket (or use the provided tips to enlarge it to any size). Choose two contrasting colours to crochet the eye-catching twisted edging (or omit the final row of the border for a faster finish).

Twist-Trim Baby Blanket will become your go-to pattern for baby shower gifts. It’s so easy to personalise by choosing different pairs of colours for the edging:

And of course you don’t only have to make a baby blanket with this pattern – it includes instructions so you can easily make an afghan of any size.

Here’s an update photo: Baby T – no longer a newborn! – can confirm that his blanket still looks as good as new after a few months of use and many washes 🙂

Smiley baby not included with this pattern!

About the Pattern

This detailed pattern includes full written instructions, clear charted stitch diagrams, a two-page step-by-step appendix for the special twisted edging (included separately both for right- and left-handers), and bonus instructions for fixing the edging if you made a mistake anywhere earlier, so the edging colours will always match up seamlessly.

To save on paper and ink, you can print just the written pattern (2 pages) and/or the charts (2 pages) and view the photos, tutorials and other supporting content on-screen.

About PlanetJune Accessories

Twist-Trim Baby Blanket is the latest addition to my PlanetJune Accessories pattern range, which helps you to crochet elegant and useful accessories for yourself (scarves, shawls, hats, etc) and for your home (blankets, rugs, containers, etc).

Don’t be afraid to try something new in crochet – PlanetJune Accessories patterns include detailed instructions for all the techniques you’ll need in order to complete them!

Links & Launch Discount

If you’re ready to try crocheting your own Twist-Trim Baby Blanket, you can buy it individually from my shop, or as part of a Custom Set of any 3 PlanetJune Accessories patterns of your choice.

And, for this week only, save 50c on the baby blanket pattern by using discount code SNUGGLY at checkout. (Valid until Sunday 23rd July 2017.)

Tip: The discount is valid on the blanket pattern alone and the Custom Set including the blanket – so you can save even more by buying the multipack deal with this discount!

Or, if you’re not ready to buy just yet, please heart or queue it on Ravelry so you don’t forget about it:

I hope you’ll enjoy making this afghan for all the little ones in your life – and maybe sizing it up to make a lovely throw for yourself too?!

This is a really hard decision to make, but I think it’s time to retire my PlanetJune Commissions – at least in its current incarnation…

I first created my own Kickstarter-with-a-twist commissions system over 5 years ago. My crowd-funded system helped me to see which of my potential animal designs may be most popular by letting people ‘vote’ with their pledges, and helped me create some lovely animal patterns I may never have got around to designing otherwise.

(And there’s still one more commissioned design – the Goat – coming soon!)

Why Close Commissions?

It was a great idea, but a combination of my reluctance to raise the prices ‘too high’ and the reality of life circumstances beyond my control meant that I was always in danger of drowning under a wave of far too many commissions, and never-ending deadlines don’t make the best environment to foster creativity.

I’ve finally got the pricing right, so the rate of new commissions has stabilised to a manageable level, but now I have a different problem: disappearing pledgers. I was left $54 short on the (currently in-progress) Goat commission, due to people who never responded to invoice reminders or personal emails!

I hope nothing bad has happened to those people who I can’t seem to reach – maybe they just changed their email address and forgot to notify me – but the upshot is that I can’t contact them to ask for payment when the time comes, so their non-paying pledges are fogging up the system.

I’ve checked up on all the other current pledgers and I can see that 45 pledges were made by people who haven’t signed into their PlanetJune account in 2017. That means they didn’t check their pledges (as I asked them to do in January) so it’s a good indication that they aren’t receiving my emails and are unlikely to make good on those pledges. And there could be more pledgers who’ve changed their email address since then.

What fraction of these pledged dollar amounts is real..?

My main concern is protecting the commissions system against this happening again in future. It’s not fair to the people making pledges if the design that has more real pledges is not the one that gets made.

I could see only one way to safeguard the current system: by adding an extra layer of rules and confirmations…

1. To check that everyone is still happy to pay before I send out any invoices
2. To suspend pledging privileges for anyone who’s failed to pay up in the past
3. To regularly ask everyone to reconfirm their pledges (and then I’d delete any pledges that weren’t reconfirmed)
4. To regularly remind people to update their email address if/when it changes

All that sounds like a lot of extra inconvenience for my pledgers! Being part of commissioning new designs is supposed to be fun, and all those new rules and checks would be anything but, so this isn’t a solution I’d be happy with.

My Decision & Reflections

I’ve reached a point where big life changes are approaching (I’ll share more on that at a later date), and I need to simplify as much as I can. With my choices to either start coding all those new unwanted rules into the commissions system, or call time on this aspect of my business, I’ve chosen the latter.

It’s sad to have to withdraw a popular service from PlanetJune. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into building and coding this system from scratch. I’m proud of how well it worked, technically, and how it allowed my customers to help select my future designs.

(And this decision may not last forever: I could resurrect the commissions system at some point in the future, if and when I can figure out how to combat the problem of non-payers without inconveniencing everyone else.)

Moving Forwards: What’s Happening

The in-progress Goat design will be the last commissioned pattern in this system, and the usual commissioners-only exclusivity period will apply before it goes on general release. I’ve cancelled all other outstanding pledges (so don’t worry – you aren’t liable for any other designs you’ve previously pledged towards!)

I still have the chart showing which designs are clearly more popular than others, and that will definitely help me choose which animals to design in future. (If you’re interested in patterns for one of these animals, keep checking in with my monthly newsletter to see if I’ve designed your favourites yet!)

I also have lots of great ideas for other designs that didn’t fit under the Commissions umbrella, and I’m not scaling back on those, so please don’t worry that I’m moving away from designing crochet patterns – that couldn’t be further from the truth!

Private Commissions

I am still available for private crochet pattern commission, with the usual base rate of $300 for a design that I feel confident I can create with the skills and techniques at my fingertips, and will be able to sell in my shop. The price would be higher for anything else (e.g. a design that requires more development and prototyping or has a larger size or complexity; if you want exclusivity; if I don’t see a further market for it).

(I don’t expect to be commissioned very often at these rates, but please understand that I can’t work for any less – my designs are extremely time-consuming to create – see my Meerkat Design Report series for an example of the work that goes into a commissioned crochet pattern.)

For a much more reasonable rate, please feel free to suggest your pattern ideas to me – if I feel inspired, I’ll create the design anyway (no commission necessary) and you can buy the pattern from my shop for the regular price when it’s ready!

It’s Been a Great Ride…

I’d like to thank everyone who’s taken the time to pledge for new PlanetJune designs – I’ve enjoyed making them for you over the past 5 years, and I hope you’ve enjoyed being part of my design process!

And I’ll be keeping the list of popular animals that didn’t quite get commissioned, so I hope I’ll still be able to make at least a few of your favourites, in time 🙂

Are you ready for a pattern that’ll give you a spectacular result thanks to some clever new techniques and tricks? In that case, I think you’ll love my new design: the Owl Collection:

Owl Collection is a clever low-sew design: the head, body, legs and wings are all crocheted as one piece, giving you an elegant bird silhouette with the perfect owl posture and an effortlessly smooth result! This concept has been over a year in the making, and I hope you’ll agree it was worth the wait…

About the Designs

I’ve used that fact in my design to let you choose any direction for your owl’s head to be facing: to the left, right, or straight ahead. Don’t you think a pair of matching owls, facing in opposite directions, would make a lovely bookcase or mantelpiece ornament?

I’ve designed the pattern to give you endless options: by varying the colours, the direction the head is looking, and the facial embellishments, you can make your own customised owls! Although I used black eyes for my sample owls – it fits better with the PlanetJune style – you can use coloured eyes (try any shade of orange or yellow) to give yours an unblinking owlish stare.

Make them to match a real breed of owl, or more cartoony with brighter colours and oversized eyes – it’s up to you. My samples are loosely based on real types of owls, and you can switch out the colours or add more detail if you want to represent a specific species more closely. A flecked yarn (for example I used Lion Brand Vanna’s Choice in Grey Marble for my grey owl) is an easy way to give a realistic mottled result.

Note: I’d love to design a barn owl too, but to make it look right it’d need lots of colour changes and special shaping to make the distinctive heart-shaped face, so that’s a challenge I’ll have to save for some future point in time!

Here are a few examples to get you started, if you want to base your owls on real species:

• Round head (my white owl): e.g. Snowy Owl, Fishing Owl, Hawk Owl
• Facial disks or ‘eyebrows’ (my brown owl): e.g. Tawny Owl, Wood Owl, Little Owl
• Ear tufts or ‘horns’ (my grey owl): e.g. Horned Owl, Eagle Owl, Scops Owl

About the Pattern

This pattern includes several new techniques and tricks, but you can rest assured that I’ll walk you through each stage with clear explanations and a massive 45 step-by-step photos. But please don’t be intimidated – once you’ve made one owl, you’ll understand how the construction works and it’ll be fast and easy to make more owls!

As all these photos make for a long, photo-heavy pattern, with several photos on every page, I’ve also reformatted just the written crochet instructions (without the photos, notes or assembly instructions) as an Appendix to the patten. If you like to work from a printout while you crochet, you can save paper and ink by printing just the 4 text-only pages of the Appendix, and referring to the full pattern onscreen if/when you need to look at the photos.

Buy Now & Launch Discount

Ready to get owling? You can pick up the entire Owl Collection from my shop right now for only $7.50!

If you’re not ready to buy just yet (or even if you are!), please remember to heart and queue it on Ravelry:

But let’s make that deal even better: for one week only, you can buy the Owl Collection for the extra-special low price of $7. To take advantage of this deal, add the Owl Collection to your shopping cart, and enter the discount code HEDWIG at checkout! (Offer ends Thursday 29 June, 2017.)

Wings & Things Crochet-Along

And, from today until the end of August, join us in the PlanetJune Ravelry group for the summer CAL, where you can make and share any PlanetJune designs with wings (all kinds of birds, winged dinosaurs, fruit bat, dragonfly, pegasus…) – including the new Owls, of course!

I hope you’ll share your projects with us there – I’d love to see them…

The recent popularity of art weavings, macrame and other yarny wall hangings got me thinking, and I came up with the novel idea to display amigurumi creatively as a wall hanging…

It’s easier to hang than a mobile, and more versatile as a decorative piece for all ages. And it looks even better in person than in the photo – it’s so bright and cheerful!

For my wall hanging, I decided my Tropical Fish patterns would make a perfect grouping, and I added some tiny crocheted balls to represent bubbles in the water. But you could combine any small amigurumi and crocheted pieces into a decorative wall hanging in this way.

Want to make your own wall hanging? The tutorial is free to view online, and I’ve also compiled it all together into a handy PDF – yours in return for any-sized donation – that includes lots of bonus content: the exclusive Tiny Ball crochet pattern; step-by-step tutorials for my preferred knots (particularly useful with slippery fishing line!), and more bonus tips, photos and advice 🙂

Go to the Amigurumi Wall Hanging Tutorial >>

As part of the new-and-improved Commissions process, I’ve added a 2-week exclusivity period for all new commissions, so, if you didn’t pledge towards the capy, you may have been waiting (im)patiently for this announcement: the Capybara crochet pattern is finally available to purchase!

I’ll definitely be giving early access to all commissioned patterns in future – it’s a nice extra reward to those who choose to pledge towards my pattern commissions, and it’s fun seeing projects pop up on Ravelry before the pattern is even officially available 🙂

Capybara Fun Facts

• The Capybara is the largest rodent in the world, and can reach up to 150lbs in weight.
• Its closest relative is the guinea pig.
• Capybara come from South America and their Latin name Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris means ‘Water Pig’.
• They are semiaquatic herbivores and live in environments that include both forest and rivers, lakes or swamps.
• They have slightly webbed feet, and eat, swim and even sleep partially submerged in water!

About the Pattern

The Capyabara pattern is nice and chunky, at about 8″ (20cm) long. Despite the size, he’s pretty quick to crochet: he’s made in a single colour; his head and body are crocheted as one piece, and capys don’t have tails! He has magical shaping built in, and the perfect snooty Capybara nose.

As always, the pattern includes full instructions and plenty of step-by-step assembly photos so you can make a perfect Capybara of your own!

Ready to Crochet?

If you were one of the Capybara commissioners, I hope you’ve been enjoying your early access to the pattern over the past few weeks!

If you’ve been waiting for the capy pattern, you can pick it up from my shop right now – and then join our Sight-C-ing CrochetAlong (making anything that starts with the letter ‘C’!) in the PlanetJune Ravelry group 🙂

Or, if you’re not ready to buy just yet, please add my Capybara to your queue or favourites on Ravelry, so you don’t forget about it:

I hope you’ll enjoy my Capy pattern! It was a fun one to design, especially with that very distinctive body shape 🙂

Needlesculpting is a finishing technique you can use to improve the shape of your amigurumi. It uses a yarn needle and length of matching yarn to draw in certain areas of an amigurumi to alter its shape, as with this bulky-necked panda:

If you’re following a pattern with crocheted shaping built in, you shouldn’t need to do this, but it can be a useful tool to have in your arsenal, if you want to:

• Fix ‘lost’ shaping: If you’ve crocheted too loosely or been over-generous with your stuffing, and the built-in shaping has been lost.
• Add extra definition: Exaggerate the shape of your amigurumi.
• Make easy modifications: Alter the shape of a pattern without modifying the stitches you crochet.

Continue to my tutorial and I’ll show you how to add needlesculpted details to your amigurumi! >>

While taking a photo of my original crocheted alpaca Alpaca together with my new felted alpaca Alpaca, it occurred to me that I’ve also made several other ‘pairs’ of crochet/non-crochet sculptures over the years!

Here’s my gallery of pairs – can you see the similarities between each pair?
(The names are links to my patterns, in case you’d like to make the crocheted version!)

Crocheted and needlefelted Alpacas (2008 and 2017):

…crocheted and needlefelted Guinea Pigs (2007 and 2009):

…crocheted and hand-sewn Aardvarks (2011 and 2013):

…crocheted and polymer clay Strawberry Poison Dart Frogs (2010 and 2010):

…and crocheted and polymer clay Succulents (2012 and 2011):

I think it’s strange and lovely to see the way my PlanetJune style seems to come through, no matter what medium I work in! I really enjoy sculpting, in any medium. Although the process of crocheting is very different from building up clay, fiber, etc, the placement of stitches to form a 3D shape gives amigurumi the added bonus that the finished pieces are more easily replicable than with other crafts.

I’m so glad that crochet lends itself to patterns – it’d be much more difficult to explain how to sculpt an animal or plant from clay or fibre without being able to quantify the instructions with specific stitches in specific places. If I hadn’t found amigurumi, I’d still be making nature-inspired sculptures, but I don’t think I’d be able to make my living from them!

I work far too slowly to be an ‘artist’ and sell my finished pieces, but I feel like my patterns are a way to share my designs in a way that I couldn’t easily do if I switched to a different medium, and I love that my patterns give me a way to help other people to craft their own soft sculptures too! ♥

The first cycle of the new and improved PlanetJune Commissions system is complete, with the completion of my Capybara pattern. (That takes my total to 18 commissioned designs in 5 years!)

The system is much more efficient now: you can manage all your pledges from within your PlanetJune account, and each new commissioned pattern is now automatically added to all the pledgers’ PlanetJune accounts when it’s ready.

I’ve also made a few customer-suggested improvements, going forwards…

Pattern Exclusivity Window

From now on, I’ve introduced a 2 week exclusivity window for the pledgers of a new commission before the pattern is available to the public, as an added ‘thank you’ to those who pledged towards the commission.

(If you didn’t pledge towards the Capybara and would like the pattern, sign up for my monthly newsletter if you’d like notification when the pattern is ready to purchase! I’ll also be blogging details about the pattern and sharing some Capybara fun facts at that time…)

New Progress Chart

I’ve refreshed the main Commissions page by reordering the progress chart by amount pledged. Now it’s easier to see which of your favourites are closer to being fully pledged and could do with a top-up:

New Animal Options

I’ve replaced all the animal options that were less than 25% funded with new options. (The retired animals aren’t necessarily gone forever, but they’ve all been there for a long time and received little interest, so it’s time to give some different animals a chance without making the list ridiculously long.) Here are the new options:

Bilby, Dodo, Kiwi, Numbat, Pangolin, Pot-Bellied Pig, Puffin, Tasmanian Devil, Tortoise (Giant, Galapagos), Tortoise (Small, Pet), Tuatara

Which of these would you like to see made into a PlanetJune crochet pattern? The most popular so far have been the Kiwi and Dodo, but it’s early days yet, so get pledging for your favourites of the new additions!

My next commissions timeslot will begin at the end of May, and I’ll be starting work on my Goat design then, as it’s already fully-funded. But I wonder if the following commission will be one of the current front-runners, or one of the new additions? That’s up to you 😉