I had an amazing day at the show today. So good, in fact, I’m going back for more tomorrow!

And to everyone who is visiting my site for the first time after picking up my card at the show: welcome!

Want to know some more about me and my crafting? The lovely and crafty Carina (Wardi) interviewed me a few weeks ago, and the interview is up on her blog today.

Go and check out my interview, and while you’re there, take a look at Carina’s blog and see the happy colourful crafts she’s been making lately!

Thanks to Carina for taking the time to interview me – it was fun 🙂

Photo credit: embroidered garden by Carina

I’ve ordered business cards etc from VistaPrint before, so I’m on their mailing list for all their promotions. A couple of weeks ago they had an offer that was too good to pass up, so I thought I’d sample a wider range of their products. I designed PlanetJune postcards, magnets, sticky notes, a rubber stamp and even a custom pen!

Today my box of goodies arrived. I’ve never been disappointed with VistaPrint, and this order was no exception.

Lots of stuff!

These ‘business cards’ and ‘postcards’ are actually fridge magnets. My polymer clay Gingy wanted to get in on the fridge photoshoot too 🙂

The full order (click pic for larger version). Clockwise from left: postcard, rubber stamped images, pen, sticky notes, large postcard, business card magnet.

I think my rubber stamp design (my pink bear and the words ‘PlanetJune.com‘) may have been too detailed, as I’m having trouble getting a good print of the bear. I’m a stamping novice, though, so it could be the paper or ink at fault – I will experiment some more.

My favourite items from the order are the sticky notes (the pink bear image is faint enough to write over the top of it) and the large AquaAmi postcard. I made a border for the AquaAmi card featuring tiny images of all my designs, and I like the effect. I almost want to frame one of these and put it up on the wall in my craft room!

You’ve probably noticed that PlanetJune has been MIA for the past three days. I’ve been having problems with my webhost – they suspended my site without notice for using too much bandwidth… Oops, I guess I am just too popular – isn’t that crazy?!

To anyone who e-mailed me this week via craft@planetjune.com, the e-mail account was also suspended so I haven’t received any e-mail. Please write to me again!

I’m not sure if it’s all back up for good, but fingers crossed it’ll be okay from now on. I think I have found a new host to switch to in the next few days and then PlanetJune will be bigger and better than ever!

Thank you so much to everyone who sent me concerned messages this week – I am fine, thank you 🙂

Ahhh, it’s good to be back…

I received an e-mail from a potential customer yesterday:

I writes you because I would like to make the fuzzy bears because my daughter finds him(it) very beautiful. I wanted to buy you the model but regrettably I have not paypal. you would have another method of payment to give me. I can for example if you give me your banking coordinates to be made a transfer.

I replied back with my alternate payment options (cash, cheque, money order), and received this in response:

Thank you for your answer. To be able to make the payment on-line, I need your IBAN address, or your N of account as well as the coordinates of your bank.

Giving this person the benefit of the doubt (sounds like English isn’t their first language), I replied back again to reiterate that they may also send me payment by mail. I then received another reply:

I understands that it you frightened we never know what can arrive. But I promises you that my attentions are not bad. I ask you for that because I have a paypal nor credit card and the only means for me to pay your model which I wish enormously remain the on-line payment from my bank to your bank. I shall send you the proof of payment by email. I can so tried to make the payment if you give me only the IBAN.

Now, there is a chance that this person is genuine, but by this point I strongly suspect that this is a personalized phishing scam! This is a far cry from the standard random spam e-mails claiming the sender will give you a million dollars for helping them to move money into the country – someone has gone to some trouble to e-mail me directly, even using details of one of my patterns (fuzzy bear) to sound more genuine.

I just wanted to warn other people who sell online to beware this kind of scam. Never, ever, give out your bank account details!

It’s 2008 already – it’s hard to believe. When I began my craft blog a year and a half ago, I had no idea what it would grow into. No idea that anyone would ever be interested in reading it, no idea that people would be adding my blog to their blogrolls, and absolutely no idea that I’d end up running a crochet pattern business through it!

When I set up my blog, I spent about 2 seconds thinking of a name for it. I wanted it to be a craft blog and only include the crafty bits of my life in it, so ‘Craftybits @ PlanetJune.com‘ is what it became. The name has been nothing but trouble… People try to e-mail me at craftybits@planetjune.com – that’s not even a real e-mail address (although I had to create one when I realised what was happening). That poor e-mail address gets hundreds of daily spam messages that I have to wade through just in case there’s a real message buried in there somewhere. The name is also too long to fit in blogrolls – people started calling me ‘Craftybits’ instead of ‘PlanetJune’, and that’s far too generic for my liking 😉

So, what to do… I have built a brand name and I don’t want to change it. So a slight modification – from today my blog is PlanetJune – simple and memorable. It’s still my craft blog; nothing else will change. But if I’m in your blogroll I’d appreciate it if you could change your link to be simply called ‘PlanetJune’. Thank you!

I am planning lots more crafty projects, tutorials, and (of course) crochet patterns coming up on the new, improved PlanetJune blog in the upcoming year, so keep watching this space. Happy 2008!

***

Update: we’ve been snowed in all day today. The snow seems to have knocked out the internet and the service guy isn’t coming out till tomorrow afternoon. I’ve ventured out to post this, but if you’ve e-mailed me or ordered any patterns, I won’t be able to respond until it’s back – sorry!

I haven’t had much crafting time lately – we are in the middle of buying our first house, and the process is exciting and scary and fun and frustrating and amazing and exhausting and, most of all, time-consuming. I am really missing my crafting time these days; I feel like I’m skipping the part of the day where I get to decompress and relax and quietly enjoy myself.

Yesterday we went to meet our lawyer and sign all the papers and hand over our money. On our way home, my lovely husband volunteered a detour to Herrschners yarn and craft store. I can’t believe I will have such a fantastic local yarn store! Dave found me the perfect yarn, with the added bonus of a sale price of over 80% off! This is Gedifra Tecno Hair and it’s beautifully soft and light and fluffy:

Now what could I make with a yarn like this? Hmmm, I wonder…

On an unrelated note, did I mention that I am a big orang utan fan?

We are going to be pretty busy for a while! There’ll be rooms to paint and curtains to sew and IKEA furniture to assemble – does any of that count as crafting? Let’s say yes, and then I can show you our progress. And, eventually, I will have my own craft room to show off and my world will be a better place.

Kari and I had a great time in Chicago. Kari made this lovely soft fleece tree scarf for me, accessorized with a Crafty Ginger tsumami kanzashi flower snap – yay! She also gave me some gorgeous grey fuzzy yarn, which I know I’ll be able to make good use of 😉

We went to the Sanseido bookstore in the Mitsuwa Japanese marketplace . If you’re in Chicago I highly recommend you check it out if you love Japanese craft books (and who doesn’t?) – they had a wide selection and the prices were very reasonable. I managed to restrict myself to buying three:

ISBN 9784529039017 (cute stuffed toy patterns)

ISBN 4277490239 (crochet motifs)

ISBN 9784277490405 (pretty patchwork)

Beautiful, inspirational books! And all 3 for only $20 🙂