This is one of those ideas that came to me on a whim and then I couldn’t possibly not make it! There are flocks of wild guinea fowl around Cape Town, and I see, or at least hear, them several times a week. It’s hilarious to watch a group of empty-headed guinea fowl following each other around, especially when one starts to run and they all follow, bobbing along at surprising speed!

Guinea fowl have beautiful spotted feathers, a plump, shapely body, and a colourful featherless face – the perfect combination of eye-catching colouring and exaggerated appearance to form a bold, stylized design:

Colour! Shape! Isn’t it fun?

Inspiration

I didn’t think a bird with such detailed markings would be something I could reproduce for a crochet pattern, but then I saw the colourful, stylized guinea fowl designs on ceramics by local artist Dragana Jevtovic. It suddenly occurred to me that I could use a similar concept in my own work, by also representing the tiny guinea fowl spots on a larger scale. With that thought, an impossibly detailed surface pattern became perfect for amigurumi. This could be the start of new explorations of colour and pattern for me; I’m so happy with the eye-catching result of this first design!

I like to pick up guinea fowl feathers when I see nice ones like these; they’re too pretty to leave on the ground.

Guinea Fowl fun facts

• Guinea fowl (aka guineafowl or guineahens) are found in the wild throughout Africa south of the Sahara desert, but they have also been domesticated.
• There are several species of guinea fowl, but the most recognisable (and the one on which I based my design) is the helmeted guinea fowl.
• Guinea fowl make excellent farm ‘watchdogs’, as they squawk loudly whenever potential danger approaches, sending all the chickens running to safety!
• They eat insects and ticks as well as seed, so domestic guinea fowl are handy to keep around the garden for pest control.
• Guinea fowl can fly, but prefer to run from danger. At night, they fly up into a tree to roost.

About this pattern

As well as a lovely ornamental amigurumi, a guinea fowl would make a perfect toy, with its large cuddly body, and bright colours and patterning. Don’t be intimidated by the combination of shaping and frequent colour changes – I carefully designed this pattern to have separate shaping rounds and colour changing rounds, so you never have to worry about both at once! And, when you’re making the spots, the other yarn is always carried, so there are no knots to tie and no ends to weave in. It’s surprisingly simple, and very satisfying to see the beautiful body shape come together.

If you’d like to make a guinea fowl (or a whole flock!), you’ll find my Guinea Fowl pattern in the new Birds category of the PlanetJune shop.

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

I hope you’ll enjoy this design as much as I enjoyed creating it! Please let me know what you think in the comments 🙂

I’m updating my entire back catalogue of patterns with extra information and tips and a new space-saving layout, and re-releasing them in batches as they are ready. Please see the Pattern Re-Release FAQ for more information.

Today I have a big new batch of re-releases for you. This batch includes 13 donationware crochet patterns, and 6 donationware craft tutorials. Note:

• This batch doesn’t include the PlanetJune Accessories donationware – all my Accessories patterns will be re-released in a separate batch.
• All later donationware patterns/tutorials that aren’t included here are already in the new format!

All these crochet patterns are now updated and re-released:

And all these craft tutorials:

If you’ve previously donated towards any of these patterns or tutorials, the update(s) are now ready for you to download in the new format!

Log back into your PlanetJune account at any time in the next 2 weeks and you’ll see the download buttons for these purchases have been re-enabled, so you can click and download the new versions.

If you have lots of past orders in your PlanetJune account, you don’t have to hunt for the right ones; just follow these simple steps:

1. In your PlanetJune account, click Show All Orders.
2. At the top of that page, click to the list of all your past purchases.
3. Find the pattern/tutorial name in the alphabetical list.
4. Click the order number to go directly to that order.
5. Re-save your pattern/tutorial 🙂

If you have any questions about the pattern reformat project, or you received the patterns through a different mechanism (and so don’t have an order for them in the PlanetJune shop) but you’d still like the new versions, check the Pattern Re-Release FAQ for more information.

(There’ll be more pattern re-releases coming soon – if you’d like to get an email notification each time a new batch is ready, sign up for the Crochet Pattern Updates mailing list.)

It’s taken a while to get to this point, but my Meerkat crochet pattern is finally ready to release!

Meerkat Fun Facts

• Meerkats live in southern Africa and are related to mongooses.
• They live in clans of about 20 in large underground burrows.
• They primarily eat insects but also munch on scorpions (they bite off the poisonous sting first).
• One meerkat always stands guard to look for danger such as eagles and jackals while the others forage for food.
• Their dark eye patches act like sunglasses to protect their eyes from the strong desert sun!

Amigurumi meerkat reporting for guard duty!

What Makes a Good Cover Photo?

As I’ve been talking about my process with this design (see the Design Reports #1, #2, #3 and #4), I thought I’d give you one last glimpse into what goes into a PlanetJune pattern: the cover photography.

My pattern was ready before the end of April, and all that was left was to take the cover photos. I had a great plan to take them while my Mum was visiting: we’d be passing through all sorts of natural African landscapes, so I’d take my camera and meerkat with me and take his photos on location in his natural environment!

We picked a day forecast for intermittent clouds and set out, only to find non-stop brilliant sunshine all day, which was great for Mum on her holiday – we had a lovely day relaxing in the sunshine and admiring the views – but not quite right for my cover shoot:

Full sun means deep shadows, and that’s not what you need for cover photos! Although appealing photos play a critical part in selling a design, it’s very important that you, the potential customer, can clearly see exactly what you’re trying to make. A set of dull studio photos where you can look at the meerkat from every angle is more useful than a stunningly artistic nature photoshoot where you can’t really see the meerkat well. In these photos, the eye patches are overshadowed by actual shadow, the arms cast distracting dark shadows on the body, and the tail is all but invisible in deep shade.

I tried again in a different spot, but the sun was unrelenting (although I still think this photo is really cute!):

So my pattern was stalled until Mum had gone back home and I could head back to my studio to recreate the Meerkat’s natural environment, PlanetJune-style.

I’m so glad I gave myself permission to drop the deadlines with my pattern commissions – I really wouldn’t have been happy to release the pattern with unhelpful cover photos, and I think taking the extra time at every stage of this design and pattern-creation process has really paid off. The final photos may not have the realism of the location shoot, but you can appreciate the meerkat’s cuteness much more with this set of photos, don’t you think?

If you were one of my patient patrons who commissioned this pattern, the pattern is, at last, ready for you to download from your PlanetJune account – thank you!

For everyone else, don’t you think you need a meerkat to watch over you while you work? Buy the Meerkat pattern from the PlanetJune shop and you can crochet your very own meerkat sentry!

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

I hope you like my Meerkat – getting to this point has been quite a journey, hasn’t it?!

I’ll be taking a short break before I begin my next commission. Life keeps throwing unexpected challenges at me, and illness and worry make everything a struggle. As I said in my Year in Review plan, I need some time with absolutely no commitments to escape this whirlpool of stress and ill-health, then I’ll have the energy to do justice to my Camel commission! I’ve been looking forward to making my camel for a very long time, and I still am – I just need a little space to breathe first 🙂

I’m updating my entire back catalogue of patterns with extra information and tips and a new space-saving layout, and re-releasing them in batches as they are ready. Please see the Pattern Re-Release FAQ for more information.

Time for the next batch of re-releases (and a test run for some improvements to my shop – keep reading for details and to help test the changes). This batch includes all my plant patterns: Cactus & Succulent Collections, African Violets, Lucky Bamboo, Water Lily and Christmas Trees. Note:

• This batch doesn’t include the donationware flowers etc – all my Donationware patterns will be re-released in a separate batch.
• The Primroses pattern also isn’t included in this batch as it’s a new release, so it’s already in the new format – there’s nothing to update 🙂

If you’ve previously purchased any of these pattern(s) (individually, or the Cactus and/or Succulent multipacks), the update(s) are now ready for you to download in the new format!

Log back into your PlanetJune account at any time in the next 2 weeks and you’ll see the download buttons for these pattern purchases have been re-enabled, so you can click and download the new versions.

If you have lots of past orders in your PlanetJune account, you don’t have to hunt for the right ones; just follow these simple steps:

1. In your PlanetJune account, click Show All Orders.
2. At the top of that page, click to the list of all your past purchases.
3. Find the pattern name in the alphabetical list.
4. Click the order number to go directly to that order.
5. Re-save your pattern 🙂

PDF Download Test & Survey

This batch also has a special second purpose. As many of you know, zip file downloads are becoming less popular, particularly as they are very difficult to use with iPads and other mobile devices. To make everyone’s lives easier, I plan to convert my shop to straight PDFs, but this is a huge task with over 250 products to convert, so I want to be very careful to make sure nothing goes wrong, and make sure that your old orders will still be available if you need another copy of any of your patterns.

As a first test run, I’ve added a new PDF version of the Christmas Trees pattern to every order that already included that pattern. If you’ve bought this pattern, you’ll see the updated zip file (MP008.zip) in your order, and also a new file (Christmas Trees crochet pattern.pdf).

Here’s what the files should look like when you access your order in your account.

If you’ve purchased Christmas Trees, please try to download the Christmas Trees crochet pattern.pdf file and fill in this brief survey about your experience. This will give me valuable feedback to make sure the system is working well for everyone before I start to convert over 250 items in my shop! This isn’t a job I want to do twice, so it’s important that as many people test the system as possible before I get any further into making changes.

As a thank you for helping me test this new functionality, everyone who completes the survey will receive a discount code to use on your next order from PlanetJune! Complete the survey here >>

Note: If anything goes wrong and you can’t save/view the new PDF, you can just download MP008.zip instead – it’s also been updated to the new version of the Christmas Trees pattern, so you won’t miss out. Please let me know what went wrong as well, though, so I can make sure to fix it before the new shop format goes live.

If you have any questions about the pattern reformat project, or you received the patterns through a different mechanism (and so don’t have an order for them in the PlanetJune shop) but you’d still like the new versions, check the Pattern Re-Release FAQ for more information.

(There’ll be more pattern re-releases coming soon – if you’d like to get an email notification each time a new batch is ready, sign up for the Crochet Pattern Updates mailing list.)

Today I have a new fast and easy donationware pattern for you: Tiny Eggs!

Make miniature (1″/2.5cm) crocheted eggs that are still egg-shaped despite their diminutive size. Decorate for Easter with a bowl of calorie-free ‘chocolate’ eggs (just don’t eat them!) or make them as realistic-sized songbird eggs.

Tiny Eggs is a free pattern, but I decided to go a step further with the donationware PDF version this time, so it gets its own name:

Tiny Eggs in a Nest is the PDF version, available for any size donation, and it includes a bonus pattern for a tiny textured bird’s nest (3″/7.5cm diameter) which I designed especially for these eggs.

The beautiful nest is smooth on the inside and textured on the outside, just like a real bird’s nest, so you can make a nestful of Tiny Eggs as a lovely decoration to celebrate spring, or as the perfect accompaniment to an amigurumi bird.

So, to show my appreciation, I give added value to the PDF version wherever I can, and in this case, it means the very special textured nest pattern, available exclusively in the Tiny Eggs in a Nest PDF pattern. With the bonus nest pattern, Tiny Eggs can do double duty as both a mini Easter Egg pattern and a sweet bird’s nest pattern.

I hope you enjoy making the teeniest tiniest crocheted eggs, with or without the nest!

Go to the free Tiny Eggs pattern >>

Or jump straight to donate:

Order the Tiny Eggs in a Nest pattern >>

Not ready to make it yet? Add it to your Ravelry queue:

PS – Don’t forget to share your eggs and/or nests in the PlanetJune Spring/Easter CAL on Ravelry 🙂

I’m updating my entire back catalogue of patterns with extra information and tips and a new space-saving layout, and re-releasing them in batches as they are ready. Please see the Pattern Re-Release FAQ for more information.

With my Meerkat design in progress, it seemed fitting to select all my other African animal patterns for the next batch of re-releases. These include the AfricAmi trio (Elephant, Hippopotamus, and Rhinoceros), and my Ring-Tailed Lemur, Aardvark, and Lion & Lioness patterns.

If you’ve previously purchased any of these pattern(s) (individually, or in the AfricAmi Set 1 multipack), the update(s) are now ready for you to download in the new format!

Log back into your PlanetJune account at any time in the next 2 weeks and you’ll see the download buttons for these pattern purchases have been re-enabled, so you can click and download the new versions.

If you have lots of past orders in your PlanetJune account, you don’t have to hunt for the right ones; just follow these simple steps:

1. In your PlanetJune account, click Show All Orders.
2. At the top of that page, click to the list of all your past purchases.
3. Find the pattern name in the alphabetical list.
4. Click the order number to go directly to that order.
5. Re-save your pattern 🙂

If you have any questions about the pattern reformat project, or you received the patterns through a different mechanism (and so don’t have an order for them in the PlanetJune shop) but you’d still like the new versions, check the Pattern Re-Release FAQ for more information.

(There’ll be more pattern re-releases coming soon – if you’d like to get an email notification each time a new batch is ready, sign up for the Crochet Pattern Updates mailing list.)

Once of my most popular crochet patterns is my Baby Bunnies set – they seem to have really captured my customers’ imaginations, and I’ve seen dozens of people who’ve each made dozens of baby bunnies – they’re multiplying like, um, rabbits! And now you can get even more value from this pattern, by buying my new Baby Bunnies 2 Expansion Pack, which will let you create baby bunnies with Pointed, Blazed and Dutch markings.

New Bunnies! L-R: Pointed Bunny, Dutch Bunny, Blazed Bunny

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.

I’ve only made one sample for each marking type, but, by swapping upright or lop ears with each type, you can make a total of 6 different new bunnies. (Then add the original bunnies, and all the different colourways, and you have dozens of different bunny options!)

Baby Bunnies 1 & 2 playing together – swap the ears and colours for even more options

Build your Colour-Changing Confidence

The original Baby Bunnies is a good pattern for fairly new crocheters, as there’s only one colour to deal with, the small size means you can finish it pretty quickly, and you get lots of practice with counting your stitches to achieve that perfect bunny shape! So I’m continuing that beginner’s crochet education with Baby Bunnies 2, as the 3 marking types are graded by difficulty:

1. Test the waters by making your first simple colour changes for the Pointed Bunny.
2. Get your feet wet with a few more colour changes in the Blazed Bunny markings.
3. Wade into multiple changes per round with the more complex Dutch Bunny markings.

Increasing difficulty, from top to bottom: Pointed, Blazed, Dutch markings

By the time you’ve completed all three of these bunnies, you’ll be a colour-changing expert, and ready to tackle one of my larger patterns with complex colours, such as the Emperor Penguin, the Kingfisher, or the Orca:

Ready to Buy?

You can buy the Baby Bunnies 2 Expansion Pack for only $3.50 individually from the shop, or, if you haven’t already bought the Baby Bunnies pattern, you can select it as an add-on to that pattern before you add it to your shopping cart, and save 50c on the pair.

Or, if you’re not quite ready to start bunny-making, why not favourite or queue the new set on Ravelry, so you don’t forget about them?

Launch Discount

If you’ve already bought the original Baby Bunnies, you won’t be able to save that 50c. But, for 7 days only, add the Baby Bunnies 2 Expansion Pack pattern to your shopping cart, together with anything else (totalling $5 or more), then use the code BUNNIES at checkout and you’ll still get your discount! (Valid until next Thursday: 27th March 2014.)

Note: If you don’t need anything else right now, this also applies to Gift Certificate purchases, so you can pick up a $5 gift certificate now, get your discount, and have $5 in your PlanetJune account ready for your next purchase, or to send to a crocheting friend!

Watch out world, I believe bunny season just started!

PS – Don’t forget to share photos of your Baby Bunnies in the Spring/Easter CAL thread on Ravelry too – you have until the end of April to post them…

I’m updating my entire back catalogue of patterns with extra information and tips and a new space-saving layout, and re-releasing them in batches as they are ready. Please see the Pattern Re-Release FAQ for more information.

I finally have time to resume my crochet pattern re-release project! I’m starting back in gently, by re-releasing a small set of 2 patterns: my Natural Fibres collection. These patterns both get very popular at this time of year, so I wanted to re-release them as soon as possible.

Both these patterns are personal favourites of mine, and my real-angora-yarn bunny and real-alpaca-yarn alpaca are extra-lovely and snuggly.

If you’ve previously purchased the Alpaca and/or Baby Bunnies pattern(s), the update(s) are now ready for you to download in the new format!

Log back into your PlanetJune account at any time in the next 2 weeks and you’ll see the download buttons for these pattern purchases have been re-enabled, so you can click and download the new versions.

If you have lots of past orders in your PlanetJune account, you don’t have to hunt for the right ones; just follow these simple steps:

1. In your PlanetJune account, click Show All Orders.
2. At the top of that page, click to the list of all your past purchases.
3. Find the pattern name in the alphabetical list.
4. Click the order number to go directly to that order.
5. Re-save your pattern 🙂

If you have any questions about the pattern reformat project, or you received the patterns through a different mechanism (and so don’t have an order for them in the PlanetJune shop) but you’d still like the new versions, check the Pattern Re-Release FAQ for more information.

(There’ll be more pattern re-releases coming soon – if you’d like to get an email notification each time a new batch is ready, sign up for the Crochet Pattern Updates mailing list.)