If you, like me, tend to spend a little too much time on your phone, you’re going to love my new pattern!

I use my phone for so many things these days – working, reading, playing games, video chats, shopping, watching videos – and it gets uncomfortable to hold after a while. To save my hands, I thought it’d be fun to try to recreate the old phone stand I sewed almost a decade ago, but this time in crochet, with dimensions better suited to today’s larger devices.

And look what I came up with! Crochet is the perfect medium for a stand like this: one piece, no sewing, basic stitches and techniques, and it makes a perfect support for a smartphone:

Isn’t it great?! it’s quick and easy to crochet, and makes a handy addition to any desk or bedside table. With only yarn and a little stuffing, you can make a stand that’s sturdy enough to support any phone (or a small tablet) in portrait or landscape mode.

This pattern is a blank canvas for any yarn choice: get colourful with a variegated yarn, go for a subtle neutral shade, choose your favourite colour, or match your room decor.

I especially love how my variegated phone stand turned out: the colours pooled into diagonal stripes, and because either side of the stand can be the top, I can flip it over to get a different colour pattern!

I’d recommend using a cotton yarn for your phone stand as it gives a neat smooth finish, but you can use acrylic if you prefer. This is a great pattern to use those striped or ombre cottons that look lovely in the skein but may not crochet up the way you’d expect! (In case you were about to ask, the specific yarn I used for the above sample is Bernat Handicrafter Cotton Stripes in Beach Ball Blue.)

Amigurumi-style crochet gives this stand enough stiffness to support a mobile device with just regular fibrefill stuffing, which also makes the stand light and portable. You can even comfortably rest it on your tummy so you can watch videos while lying in bed, if you’re so inclined…

As you can see below, the phone stand is also big enough to support my 7″ tablet, which is very handy for video calls or watching YouTube!

As I like to reward people who choose to donate for my donationware patterns, the PDF version of the Crochet Phone Stand pattern also includes tips for stuffing, additional instructional photos, including left-handed photos, and instructions for resizing the pattern to fit a larger tablet or other device. As always, the pattern is free for you to use online, and you need only donate if you’d like to thank me for my time in creating it, or if you’d like the easy-to-print PDF version with the bonuses.

Go to the free Crochet Phone Stand pattern >>

Or jump straight to donate:

Order the Crochet Phone Stand pattern >>

Not ready to make one yet? Add this pattern to your Ravelry queue:

I hope you’ll find this pattern useful!

I saw on Twitter that there was a UK magazine with a super-cute knit Bagpuss kit on the cover (Your Crochet & Knitting, Issue 17)… and then my Mum bought it and sent it to me!

For the uninitiated, Bagpuss was a charming UK kid’s TV show from the 70s that, despite only having 13 episodes, was repeated endlessly on the BBC throughout my early-80s childhood, and was one of my all-time favourite TV shows.

I was prepared to tackle a new adventure in my knitting journey – I’ve never followed a knitting pattern before, or worked with multiple colours, but I do like a challenge! In fact, though, the magazine included both knit and crochet patterns for Bagpuss. After looking at the photos, I could see that they all showed the crocheted version – how strange! Without even a single photo for reference, I didn’t want to take a chance that the knit version wouldn’t be as cute, so I decided to go with the crochet pattern.

I don’t actually remember the last time I crocheted something I hadn’t designed myself (maybe this panda, over a decade ago?), so this would be a novel experience too!

Crocheting

There were two things I really didn’t enjoy about the crocheting :

1. The yarn. Ugh, now I remember why all my fuzzy patterns are worked inside out in back loops only – it’s impossible to see your stitches when you work normally with a fuzzy yarn. I was just guessing where to insert my hook the entire time, counting carefully, and ripping out the round (slowly – frogging fuzzy yarn isn’t easy!) every time I was off by more than one stitch in my count for the round.
2. The kit yarn quantity. I was so happy to have the perfect Bagpuss yarns included in this kit, but with only 16g of each colour, I knew from the beginning that the quantities would be tight. I made the back legs, then weighed them and the remaining yarn and calculated how much more yarn I’d need to complete the project. The answer: exactly as much yarn as provided, with no wiggle room at all! I kept all my yarn ends as short as possible and replaced all the decreases with invdecs to try to save yarn anywhere I could.

Both those factors meant this was far from the relaxing project I anticipated when following a pattern! I had to count constantly as I crocheted – checking the stitch count at the end of the round is impossible when you can’t see the stitches to count them – and always kept a worried eye on the rapidly dwindling balls of yarn…

It all worked out though, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I finished crocheting the final piece and still had about a yard of each yarn colour remaining – it couldn’t have been much closer!

All pieces crocheted, with the tiny bits of remaining yarn at the top left.

Assembly (part 1)

Now to the assembly… I found the single paragraph of assembly instructions (“sew legs to body”, “embroider nose and mouth” etc) to be a little brief, especially when the magazine only included 2 photos of the finished Bagpuss – one from the front and one from a slight angle – so there’s no reference for the back legs or tail, or to see where the body should meet the head at the back.

I guess this is a downside of magazine patterns, where space is at a premium so instructions are brief. I’m used to my PDF patterns where I can include pages of detailed assembly instructions with step-by-step photos – quite a difference! I think the magazine format is far better suited for patterns that don’t need much (or any) assembly.

I didn’t really know how to tackle this stage – the pieces didn’t really look like they’d go together with such large openings at the top of each limb and such a tiny body, so I tried getting in touch with first the designer and then customer support at the magazine, to see if they could provide any additional photos to aid in the assembly. I moved onto the eyes while I waited for a response…

Eyes

The pattern called for 10mm blue eyes. I don’t have any coloured eyes but I do keep some clear eyes on hand, just in case – that way I can paint them to whatever colour I need!

I tried some 10mm eyes on my Bagpuss’ head but they looked too small, so I decided to go with 12mm instead.

I painted the back of the eyes with a blue acrylic paint, let them dry overnight, then added a second coat of silver. As a Bagpuss fan, I know the original Bagpuss’ eyes were painted with blue backed by silver to make them sparkle, so I thought it’d be a fun detail to replicate that! Also, I didn’t want any of the pink yarn colour to show through the translucent blue paint and dull the colour, so silver seemed like a good idea.

L-R: 3 stages: clear eye, painted with blue acrylic, overpainted with silver 

Look how effective the silver backing is to bring out the blue! Left: the eye painted blue. Right: the eye with the silver backing.

Assembly (part 2)

I stitched the muzzle down before placing the eyes and closing the head, to make sure I got the eyes in the right place.

No customer support yet, so I thought I’d finish the head while I continued to wait. This was tricky – there was no guidance on how to turn a flat white circle into the pictured shaped muzzle. I couldn’t pull the yarn of my brown embroidered stitches tightly enough to indent the muzzle without making the stitches look terrible, so I kept pulling them all out and trying again.

This white circle doesn’t look anything like the pattern photo…

After several failed attempts, I decided to cheat by needlesculpting the muzzle with a sharp needle and white sewing thread before adding the embroidery (see my article on needlesculpting if you’re not familiar with this technique!) to define the cheeks and chin.

After needlesculpting, the face looked much better.

Assembly (part 3)

After a few weeks, I realised I shouldn’t expect to ever hear back from the designer or the magazine, so I just squished all the parts together and stitched them down wherever they met. First I attached each piece by just one stitch to keep them together:

Then I posed the body, squished each limb in towards the body and then stitched them together wherever they touched, to hold them in position at the right angles.

I’m still not sure if I’ve positioned everything the way it’s suppose to be, but I think it looks okay.

Embellishment

Then it was onto to the final stage – embroidering the nose, mouth, whisker points and claws! I abandoned the recommend yarn for the embroidery in favour of dark brown embroidery floss. Just this part took about two hours to get right – I’m not that experienced with embroidery, and I am very particular about the faces of my toys! I pulled everything out at least twice before I was somewhat satisfied.

Maggie supervised this stage…

All done? I was fairly happy with him, but the big white misshapen circle at the back of his head looked ugly to me:

I used (literally) the final yard of the pink yarn to stitch over the lower part of the white area, where the head met the body, to tidy up the colouring there.

And now here we are – the finished Bagpuss!

I feel like – with all my years of design experience – I probably could have done a better job of crocheting a Bagpuss from scratch, instead of trying to follow such a frustratingly brief pattern. I tried so hard to match everything to the photos, but I feel like every single part turned out looking different from the photo, and I couldn’t match the placements of the parts to the photo, no matter how many times I tried.

(And to anyone who doesn’t think amigurumi patterns are worth paying for, I can promise you there’s a world of difference between the vague single-paragraph assembly instructions in a magazine pattern and the pages of detailed step by step instructions, photos and diagrams you’ll find in my patterns where needed! Plus customer support by email comes as standard with every PlanetJune pattern licence…)

Still, the yarn was a perfect match for Bagpuss, so I’m glad to have got the magazine and kit just for that (thanks Mum)! And it all worked out in the end for this project – I do love my cute little baby Bagpuss 🙂

Over the holidays, I decided to give myself a fun organisation project: creating a box of yarn swatches for all my amigurumi yarns, so it’ll be easy to see all my options and make choices.

Being able to see at a glance all the yarns I have available for my designs is so handy – this could be a really useful project for you too, if you make a lot of amigurumi and have a large yarn stash!

Here is the glorious result:

Isn’t it wonderful?! It’s like looking at a selection box of chocolates, but calorie-free and without the one that nobody likes.

There’s so much pretty colour here, and so much potential for what those colours could become… I feel like I’m an artist and this is my paint box.

Why Make a Swatch Box?

As a professional amigurumi designer, I have a lot of yarn in my stash. More specifically, a lot of worsted weight acrylic from several brands. Some are close enough in weight and appearance to be mixed within a project, and others aren’t (just look at my worsted weight yarn comparison to see how broad a category ‘worsted weight acrylic yarn’ really is!)

All my ami yarns are filed in plastic drawers, and every time I need to pull yarn options for a new project, I have to open several drawers, grab multiple balls of yarn, and then select the best combination of shades that could work for what I have in mind and also match in weight, sheen and texture.

This often leaves me with 10 or more balls of yarn scattered around and the hassle of cramming all the rejected yarns back into their appropriate (and usually overstuffed) drawers. Not ideal.

Making the Swatch Box

I bought lots of the plastic bobbins that are usually used for storing embroidery floss, and wrapped each one with a single layer of yarn, leaving a small space at the top to write the colour name. I used the slits at the bottom of the bobbin to hold the yarn ends in place. To finish each bobbin, I used a yarn needle to pass the yarn ends beneath the wrapped yarn on the back of each bobbin, then trimmed the excess.

I labelled each bobbin with a simple code (due to lack of space):

• top left corner : brand (e.g. B = Bernat)
• top right corner: yarn line (e.g. S = Satin)

And then wrote out the full colour name below that.

I found a plastic divided box that had sections large enough to hold several bobbins, and organised the swatches first by brand and yarn line, then by colour family.

Do you think I have enough yarn options? (Trick question: of course I don’t! That’s what the extra space and spare bobbins are for…)

After the Swatch Box

This box has changed everything for me. Today I pulled shades for a potential upcoming design, and I just opened the box and could see all my options at once. Within a couple of minutes, I had a selection ready to go, and now I can just go to the appropriate yarn drawer (as indicated from the bobbin) and grab only the shades I need to use.

I can use the holes at the top of each bobbin to clip the collection together while I use them so none go astray.

And, when I’m finished, I can easily refile the swatch bobbins in the box.

Yes, I ‘wasted’ about 2ft of each yarn in making these bobbins, but it was definitely worth it to me – just opening the box and looking at my yarn palette is so inspiring!

Now I can’t wait to grab my hook and get ‘painting’ (well, ‘sculpting’ would be more accurate) with some of these pretties…

With Christmas rapidly approaching, I thought I’d share my tips on how to arrange a (crocheted) wreath so it looks balanced and beautiful, using my Christmas Decor wreath as an example.

Wreath Inspiration Gallery

Of course, wreaths aren’t only for Christmas, and there’s no one right way to design or arrange a wreath! Depending on your aesthetic, you may like your wreath packed full or sparse, colourful or minimal, with one big focal piece or a sea of little ones.

Here are some beautiful wreaths made from PlanetJune patterns, and designed and crocheted by members of the PlanetJune Ravelry group, so you can see how versatile and fun crocheted wreaths can be:

Image credits (L-R, row by row): 1 MagicalAmigurumi; 2, 6, 7, 10 sujavo; 3, 8, 9 petrOlly; 4 aaBrink; 5 Marli2311

Pattern credits: You can find all the crochet patterns in my shop! (Ask me in the comments below if you don’t recognise something specific, and I’ll let you know which pattern it is!)

Different styles, different seasons, different themes, different results, and yet don’t they all look gorgeous? (Well done, PJers!) As you can see, with a little imagination and a few crochet patterns you can create a crocheted wreath for any occasion…

Ready to Crochet Your Own Wreath?

If you’re short on time, space or funds for your holiday decorating this year, how about whipping up my (free) Mini Wreath Ornament crochet pattern instead? It’s only 3″ across, works up in no time, and comes together like magic with almost no sewing required!

But if you’d like to decorate a larger wreath and don’t feel confident to create a design that looks balanced, I’ll give you some tips below. You can copy my method completely for your next wreath, or you can take any of my ideas that you like and make your wreath in your own style.

Design Your Wreath

Start with a wreath base

If you’d like to make your wreath completely from scratch, check out my free Crocheted Wreath Base pattern. Otherwise, you can buy a wreath form from a craft store as a starting point – there are lots of options (see the gallery above for some ideas).

Choose your patterns

In this tutorial I’m using all eight of the patterns from my Christmas Decor Collection, but you can use any patterns that fit your theme.

Decide on your overall colour scheme

Your wreath will look more harmonious if you crochet all the embellishments from a limited colour palette – see the gallery above for some great examples of the effect of different palettes.

To make the different elements stand out and give the wreath more interest, try using tones of your main colours – lighter or darker versions of the same colour.

e.g. I used three shades of green (and two different reds) to crochet my pieces. This helps you to tell the mistletoe, holly and ivy apart, even when they overlap each other.

To draw the eye and stop everything from blending together too much, you’ll need some highlights in a contrasting colour.

e.g. The small pops of yellow and white in my wreath bring it to life.

Don’t go overboard with the colours – if your wreath gets too busy, your eyes won’t know where to look! Repeating colours around the wreath help to give it a cohesive look.

e.g. I used the same shade of red for the poinsettias, baubles, and bow.

Arrange Your Wreath

Arrange the elements

If you have a main focal piece, place that first, then arrange the other elements around it.

Space each type of component out around the wreath so there aren’t any clusters where the same item or the same colour are touching. Go for balance but try to avoid too much symmetry or repetition – the aim is to make your wreath look natural and not too ‘perfect’.

Start by placing the larger pieces, spacing them out around the wreath, and then start to fill in the gaps with smaller pieces.

e.g. This diagram shows the positions of my larger pieces – the bow, holly and poinsettias. First I placed the bow at the bottom centre of my wreath. Using three of each of my larger components (instead of two or four) made it easier to spread them out around the wreath without arranging all the components in a repeating pattern or perfect mirror-image.

Fill all the spaces (or don’t)

Your design may be intentionally sparse, so parts of the wreath form are visible. This can look lovely if you buy a pretty wreath base, or crochet the form in a cheerful colour – maybe with stripes or other colourplay – and make the form a feature of the design. (There are some beautiful examples of all these in the gallery above!)

If you don’t want to make the wreath form part of the design, try to fill all the large spaces with more embellishments. You can either choose part of one of your patterns, e.g. a single holly or ivy leaf or tiny bauble would work well in my case, or add other tiny pieces from simple patterns – e.g. a small flower, leaf, or heart – in a colour to match your design!

When adding the smaller pieces, you can choose which pieces go where semi-randomly, but do your best to choose different colours wherever pieces are going to touch or overlap.

It’s always okay to leave small spaces where the wreath form shows – if your form is a dark colour like mine, it’ll recede into the shadows, or if you make it match your components, it’ll blend in nicely.

Rules are made to be broken!

e.g. Breaking my colour palette ‘rule’, my silver bells don’t fit my colour scheme, but I think it makes them stand out more than if I’d made them in yellow, white or red, don’t you?

In the end, the best design for you is one you like the look of, so
don’t be afraid to play around, try moving pieces about and pinning them in different places to see how they’d look. Stand back and look at the whole wreath from a distance to see if any elements look out of place.

It’ll probably take a little tweaking before you come up with a layout you’re happy with, but I think it’s worth it!

And please ignore any of my tips that don’t feel right in your wreath – they’re only suggestions, and you can see from the gallery above that there are countless different ways to make a very attractive-looking wreath.

A wreath can be a lovely way to display small crocheted amigurumi, appliques and other embellishments, to celebrate an occasion or just to look pretty.

I hope this post has given you some inspiration, and, if you decide to crochet a wreath, I’d love to see it! Please tag me (I’m @PlanetJune on all the socials) or email me a photo 🙂

And enter it into the PlanetJune End-of-Year CAL too! You’ll get a contest entry for each PlanetJune pattern you use (and there are prizes for everyone, so don’t miss out…)

Don’t miss the launch discount, at the end of this post!

With the winter chill setting in, it’s always my ears that feel the cold first. I usually wear a very functional earwarmer – just a shopbought band of boring black insulated fleece – but I really wanted something a bit more stylish to bring some cheer to the season this year. And here’s what I came up with – a wonderful cable pattern that looks far more complex than it is!
 

I’ve given two width options using different yarn weights depending on how wide and bulky you’d like your earwarmer to be, and how quickly you’d like to get it finished (thicker yarn needs fewer repeats!) 

The dense crochet cables make a plush squishy fabric that’s great for blocking wind. The edges of cabled panels tend to be gappy, but I’ve filled those gaps with some hidden stitches with extra squish on the inside to keep you warmer around the edges.

 
They’re only hidden from the outside! You can clearly see those snuggly stitches all around the inside top edge in the photo above.

The worsted weight option can also be worn as a fitted neckwarmer, as shown below. If you want a chunkier neckwarmer, you could upscale it further with a bulky or super bulky yarn to make a wider cowl.

This earwarmer is worked flat and seamed, you can easily customise the fit by working the pattern until it’s the desired length. Try it on as you go and check if it’s long enough to give a snug fit around your head, or just use my standard measurements as a guide if it’ll be a surprise gift for a child or adult! 

As always with my PlanetJune Accessories designs, the pattern includes full stitch instructions and my tips for all the techniques used, as well as written and charted versions of the pattern.

If you’ve been nervous to tackle cables, I’ll walk you through it in the pattern. There’s a 4-row repeat, but every wrong side row is just plain half double crochet, so you only have two pattern rows to remember. After you’ve made a few repeats, you’ll be able to fly through the pattern and make impressive-looking earwarmers for everyone on your list! 

Links and Launch Discount

Ready to get crocheting? You can buy the Cozy Cables Earwarmer pattern 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 Cozy Cables Earwarmer pattern by using discount code COZY at checkout. (Valid until Monday November 30 2020.)

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

If you’re planning on making one (or more!), please join the PlanetJune End of Year 2020 CAL – I’d love to see your earwarmers, and you’ll be entered in the CAL contest! Join us in the PlanetJune Ravelry group (or click here for full details of the CAL, including non-Ravelry entry option) 🙂

I do hope you’ll enjoy this pattern as much as I’ve enjoyed designing it. I’ve been wearing my earwarmers out in the snow already this week, and I can report that they’re keeping my ears and forehead toasty warm, even when my cheeks are freezing!

This year has been a struggle for everyone, so let’s try to end it on a high note, and celebrate our love of crochet together, with prizes for everyone!

The annual PlanetJune Christmas Crochet-Along (CAL) is back, but it’s even more inclusive this time around. You can enter the End-of-Year 2020 CAL any time from now until the end of the year by:

• Crocheting any PlanetJune Xmas/winter-themed patterns you’re making for your holiday decorating
• Crocheting any PlanetJune pattern you’re giving as a holiday gift or as a donation to a good cause (or selling to someone who’s buying it as a gift)
• Crocheting any PlanetJune pattern you’re making for yourself – remember, you deserve treats too!

Basically, you can make any PlanetJune patterns you want – the more the merrier! Share what you’re making and join our crochet party as we approach 2021.

Come to the PlanetJune group on Ravelry and join the fun! Share your crochet plans, post photos of your projects in progress, let everyone else know you like their projects, and (of course) post pics of your finished projects so we can all appreciate them.

Prizes

Thanks to a generous anonymous benefactor, we have extra prizes this year:

• First prize: $20 PlanetJune Gift Certificate
• Second prize (2 winners): $10 PlanetJune Gift Certificate
• Participation prize (2 winners): $5 PlanetJune Gift Certificate
• Runner-up prize (everyone else!): 10% PlanetJune discount code to spend in 2021

Pattern Options

While you aren’t limited to my seasonal patterns with this CAL, I thought I’d whet your appetite for project ideas with a collage of all my Christmas patterns:

Isn’t that amazing? There are soooo many to choose from! You can find all these patterns at www.planetjune.com/xmas – including plenty of free/donationware options if funds are short 🙂

How to Enter

Ravelry Users
Post a pic of your PlanetJune projects to the CAL thread in the PlanetJune Ravelry group, and tag your projects with PJCAL2020 in order for them to appear as part of the CAL.

1. Posting a photo of your finished PlanetJune project on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter
2. Tagging me (@PlanetJune) in the post so I’ll see it
3. Using the hashtag #PJCAL2020 in the post so I know it’s an official entry (only use the hashtag once per entry please, even if you post multiple photos or in multiple places!)

Example message “Here’s my entry into the @PlanetJune End-of-Year CAL! #PJCAL2020” (and add your photo, too!) 

Rules

• Prizes will be drawn from all eligible entries, starting from first prize and working down the list, with a maximum of one prize per person.
• You’ll receive one entry per PlanetJune pattern used in a completed project and tagged PJCAL2020 (if you make e.g. a Christmas wreath using 5 different patterns, you’ll get 5 entries).
• Entries will be capped at 8 per person, to give everyone a chance of winning.
• Bonus entry option (for the participation and runner-up prizes only): even if you don’t manage to complete a project, you can still be entered into the contest – all you need is to have posted at least 5 posts in the CAL thread. So do join in the conversation – you’ll be guaranteed at least a runner-up prize!

I do hope you’ll join us for this PlanetJune end-of-year crochet party – I’m really looking forward to seeing what you’re making from my patterns, as holiday gifts or for yourself! See you in the ravelry group or on social 🙂

I’m so happy with the reception my Tortoise patterns have had already! Thank you so much to everyone who’s already bought them or shared them on social – I’m so glad you love them too!

It’s been a very long journey to get to this point, so I thought I’d put together a visual diary of creating my most complex, detailed and challenging pattern to date.

For anyone who looks at the pictures of my finished tortoises and thinks that doesn’t look so hard to design, this post should be an eye-opener! Although my style is to create designs that look smooth and simple, the process is anything but.

So here goes: a decade to get properly started, and then 10 months to get finished!

2011: Conception

I came up with the idea to make a tortoise along the same lines as my AquaAmi Sea Turtle, with a segmented shell and amigurumi-style head and limbs.

There were a couple of other cute tortoise patterns out there, but they all had circular shells and that’s just not right: tortoises have very oval-shaped shells. I sketched out a design for the shell segments that would make an oval shell using simple geometric shapes, and started crocheting.

The initial concept for the shell

Once I started to assemble my pieces, I quickly realised the problem with my design: it was going to produce a flattish shell top. That’s fine for a sea turtle, with its streamlined shape for swimming, but completely wrong for a land tortoise with its domed shell.

I was a fairly new designer back then, with only a few years of experience, and the challenge of creating a very specific asymmetrical 3D shape from simple geometric segments was beyond me – I just didn’t know where to go from there – so I set it aside, and the notes and prototypes were filed for later…

You can see a couple of the original shell segments (with some dinosaur parts!) in this work-in-progress photo from 2011 – before I realised my idea wasn’t going to work…

2012-2017: Research

Moving from Canada to South Africa in 2011 brought an unexpected benefit. Although I knew that tortoises must live wild somewhere in the world, I only specifically knew about giant Galapagos tortoises, until I made the delightful discovery that ‘normal’ tortoises are pretty common in conservation areas and empty wild spaces in the Cape!

Throughout my years in Africa, I had endless opportunities to meet and study tortoises, from spotting wild tortoises while I was out in nature…

… to hanging out with rescued tortoises at my local wildlife sanctuary, World of Birds (tortoises live for a very long time, and keep growing throughout their lives, so ‘cute’ pet tortoises are often abandoned when they get too large)…

… to braking for wild tortoises crossing the road in undeveloped areas (and ‘awwww’ing whenever I spotted an adorable baby tort!)…

… to getting to hold those baby torts and learn more about them at an education and conservation centre…

In all that time, I learnt to appreciate these fascinating reptiles more than ever, and study their shells and markings up close.

2020: Realization

January

After my Christmas break, I was ready to jump into new designs for 2020! With an extra decade of design experience under my belt, I had a new idea for how to tackle that tortoise shell shape.

After all my research time, I knew exactly what I was aiming to create: a life-sized realistically-shaped tortoise with correct (if simplified) shell structure:

• The carapace (upper shell) has 13 main scutes (segments) with 5 vertebral scutes down the middle, 4 costal scutes around each side, plus a rim of marginal scutes.
• The plastron (lower shell) is shaped to give the legs room to emerge, and has a gular (throat) scute at the front.

You don’t need to know all those details, but when you look at the tortoise, it should just look right to you, from all angles.

An early prototype: the general idea is good, but it’s too boxy and the scute shapes are all just a bit wrong

Completely reworked in shape and size, this is almost the final shell design, minus the edging

It’s beginning to look like a tortoise!

February

The basic design was finished – and check, check, check, I’d included all the features I wanted in the shell, the shape was lifelike, the size was great, and the shell fit around the body beautifully.

You probably think great, I was 90% done and it’d all be smooth sailing from there? If only that were true – the fun designing part was now basically finished, but a lot of hard work was still to come…

March

To take my mind off the lockdown etc, I decided to test my prototype instructions by making a giant tortoise (using the techniques from my Complete Guide to Giant Amigurumi)…

My biggest (and certainly heaviest) giant amigurumi to date!

It was so much fun to make, but it highlighted a lot of things I’d need to explain in the pattern, and that I’d need to refine the design to simplify the assembly process. It turns out that coming up with the design, although it was a long time in the making, was just a small step in the process of producing this pattern – being able to clearly explain something that’s so unique was a whole new challenge.

May

I started prototyping expansion pack ideas while trying to figure out how on earth to make a useable and enjoyable pattern from my well over 150 step-by-step photos and 16 pages of handwritten notes…

Maggie looks a little perturbed by the shell-less tortoises!

July

I felt like the pattern was starting to get into shape, but I still had parts I hadn’t figured out how to explain clearly when I had my accident and temporarily broke my brain. Concussion meant no chance of making progress on such a high-level task – I couldn’t concentrate on anything, let alone something so demanding.

My giant tortoise was now part of the family and a fixture in my living room, but I wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to have any crocheted relatives around the world…

Yes, my giant tortoise is bulkier than Maui and Maggie combined!

September

With the post-concussion symptoms finally fading, I could get back to whipping this pattern into shape. But – disaster – I couldn’t remember anything I’d been planning to include, or where I’d left off! I had to make another complete tortoise from my notes so I could re-learn the design well enough to explain it clearly.

My 16 pages of handwritten notes – there’s a pattern hidden in there somewhere…

I started to regret thinking this could even be possible – the shell was so complicated, and there were no precedents to consult for any of the techniques I’d come up with to make this design work with 18 pieces and no sewing at all (except the back legs).

I threw out pages and pages of explanation I’d put into the pattern that were either too technical or relied on too much expertise – I didn’t want to drown you in irrelevant info, or for this to be a pattern that only a few advanced amigurumists would be able to tackle!

I kept tweaking the techniques and the instructions to make things clearer and cleaner and easier to follow, but it felt like I’d never reach the end of this marathon.

October

Success! With 18 pages, over step-by-step 70 photos with lots of annotations to make things even clearer, and separate right- and left-handed versions, I finally had a pattern that I could be proud of. I’d tried to include solutions to everything that could possibly trip you up, so your questions are answered before you even think to ask them.

This pattern is unlike anything you’ve seen before. If you follow it carefully and add stitch markers at all the specified places to make sure everything will line up, it’ll guide you step-by-step through the whole process to make a fantastic tortoise!

It’s very fitting that this design is a tortoise: it took a lot of small slow steps to go from a vague concept to a great idea to a satisfying design to a solid finished pattern, but, as in the Tortoise and the Hare fable, slow and steady wins the race.

I always try to give every design the time it needs to become the best pattern it can be. (But I do hope that my ideas won’t all take 10 years to come to fruition from now on!)

I hope you’ve enjoyed this insight into my design and patterning process. And if you’d like to enjoy the results of all that work, you can pick up my Tortoise crochet patterns from my shop!

*Cue the fanfare*

Please allow me to present… the PlanetJune tortoises!

I’m so excited to be able to share my tortoises with you today! I have so much to tell you about them, though, I don’t know where to start…

I’ll limit myself to the relevant pattern details today, and do a follow-up post later to share the long history of this design and my inspiration, and why my tortoise has been the most challenging (and eventually satisfying) pattern I’ve ever written!

Okay, so what you’re looking at above is actually two patterns:

• Top row: Tortoise – the main crochet pattern
• Bottom row: Simple-Shell Tortoise, Turtle & Terrapin – the expansion pack

What is an Expansion Pack?

• An Expansion Pack is an add-on to an existing PlanetJune pattern.
• The Expansion Pack lets you modify or add to the original pattern to create something else.
• You cannot use the Expansion Pack alone – you must also purchase the original pattern in order to be able to complete the pictured items in the Expansion Pack pattern.

Between the two patterns you can mix-and-match to customize your own perfect tortoises (and freshwater turtles and terrapins). Let’s look at them in more detail:

About the Designs

Both the patterns make amazingly realistically-shaped life-sized tortoises. They are about 8.5″ (21.5cm) long from nose to tail. Of course tortoises start life much smaller than this, and just keep growing and growing throughout their very long lives, but I settled on this size as it looks and feels just like a real pet tortoise!

These are an ingenious low-sew design – the only sewing you have to do in the entire project is stitching the back legs to the body (and those joins will be hidden by the shell, so you don’t even need to do tidy stitching to get a perfect result).

All the tortoises have separate upper and lower shells which are stretched over a fully-enclosed smooth stuffed amigurumi body. This gives a perfect finish with no worries about stuffing leaking through anywhere, and a satisfyingly solid result.

And they are just so realistic! Once you’ve crocheted the shells together over the body, your tortoise’s head and legs will look like they’ve just popped out of his shell so he can go for a walk or find some lettuce to munch. 🙂

Tortoise Crochet Pattern

The main tortoise crochet pattern has a realistic patterned upper shell made of 13 shaped segments that are crocheted together into a 3D shape that perfectly matches the shape of the body beneath.

Don’t be intimidated, though: you’ll be working in a join-as-you-go method: crocheting one piece, then crocheting it together with the previous piece(s) to build up the shell, so you never have more than 2 pieces to confuse you. Every step is clearly set out with explanatory annotated photos so you can match what you’re doing to what you see in the photos.

The lower shell is also realistically shaped and crocheted in one piece so it’s fast and easy to complete.

As there’s such a lot to this pattern, with 18 pages and over 70 step-by-step photos (with over half of those being for the upper shell!), I’ve released it as separate right-handed and left-handed editions, so you can choose your version before you checkout, and the photos will all correspond to exactly what you’ll be seeing at every stage. I’ve only done this with ebooks until now, but this pattern is special in more ways than one!

Simple Shell Tortoise, Turtle and Terrapin Expansion Pack

This Expansion Pack includes all the modifications required to crochet a Tortoise much more quickly, with a simple but well-shaped one-piece top shell with or without a contrast trim. This is a simpler and more beginner-friendly option, but still has that realistic tortoise shape throughout!

This Expansion Pack also includes modifications to turn the Tortoise into a (freshwater) Turtle or Terrapin with a pointier nose and pale-coloured lower shell. All these modifications are mix-and-match, so you can make Tortoises, Turtles and Terrapins with the geometric or simple shell style, with either head shape, with or without the contrast trim on the top shell and with a pale- or self-coloured lower shell.

Here are some examples, so you can see the different options in the Expansion Pack:

Left: Pointed (turtle/terrapin) nose; single colour upper shell; contrast colour lower shell
Right: Rounded (tortoise) nose; upper shell with contrast-coloured trim; matching colour lower shell

Colour Choices

For any of the tortoises, you can stick with muted ‘natural’ colours to match the shades of a real tortoise, or get as creative as you want! A brightly-coloured tortoise (like my magenta-and-mustard example) looks vibrant and cute, and would make a lovely decoration for a baby’s room, or a perfect toy for any child. There are no wrong choices when it comes to amigurumi tortoise colours. 🙂

Buy Now & Launch Discount

Don’t you need these tortoises in your life right now?! If so, pick up the patterns with these links:

• Just the standard Tortoise pattern
• Tortoise and Simple-Shell Tortoise, Turtle & Terrapin expansion pack
• Just the Simple-Shell expansion pack (but remember, you can’t use it without the Tortoise pattern!)

Or, if you’re not ready to make them just yet, add them to your Ravelry queue or favourites so you don’t forget about them:

Tortoise:

Simple-Shell Tortoise etc Expansion Pack:

And for one week only, you can take an extra 50c off the price: add the Tortoise or Tortoise + Expansion Pack pattern(s) to your shopping cart, and enter the discount code LETTUCE at checkout! (Offer ends Thursday October 29, 2020.)

I hope you love my tortoises as much as I do!

Don’t forget to tag me (I’m @planetjune everywhere) when you’ve made yours 🙂