Gamers, take note: they’re here! My set of giant crocheted gaming dice, by popular demand:

I cut out felt numbers to make my dice, but this is a fiddly and time-consuming technique, so I’m not recommending that you do the same: I give tips in the pattern for using fabric paint or embroidery to create the numbers, in addition to the templates I used to make my felt numbers and full numbering diagrams to create a perfect set of gaming dice.

Of course, the Gaming Dice pattern isn’t just numbering diagrams: it also has the ‘missing’ d10 shape – the only odd-one-out dice shape that isn’t one of the Platonic solids, and hence not part of my original set! I had a real challenge on my hands to create the d10 shape: it’s not formed from regular polygons like other dice, but from 10 kite shapes that combine into a pentagonal trapezohedron.

Not only was I constrained by the limits of making a good pattern (i.e. something that you can follow without tearing your hair out or getting confused) but it had to match the look, style and size of the 5 platonic solids in my Polyhedral Balls pattern, to make a complete matched set. And, after many prototypes, this is the d10 I came up with:

I crocheted it in grey to separate it from the other colourful balls, as it’s not part of the Polyhedral Balls pattern and I’m hoping not to confuse anyone with this addition!

Because of the constraints, the final d10 shape looks slightly less pointed from the side (above, left) than a real d10, but the shape is essentially correct, and it functions perfectly as a die – one side always lands facing up, and all 10 sides are equal, so there’s equal chance of any number coming up.

Gaming Dice is my first Expansion Pack pattern – although I have another 9 in the works, and ideas for even more – so I hope I’ve set everything up clearly in the shop so people will understand what exactly they are buying. (If anything is confusing, or you think may be confusing to someone else who hasn’t read the explanation in this post, please do let me know so I can fix it before I bring out any more Expansion Packs!)

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.

Gaming Dice, in particular, includes:

• The crochet pattern and assembly diagrams for the pentagonal trapezohedron (aka d10 shape!)
• Full numbering diagrams to accompany the assembly diagrams (for the d10 and all 5 of the original set), in right- and left-handed versions
• Tips and suggestions for numbering the dice with fabric paint or embroidery
• Templates for the felt numerals I used for my sample dice

You can buy the Gaming Dice Expansion Pack for $3 individually from the shop, or, if you haven’t yet bought the Polyhedral Balls pattern, you can select it as an add-on to that pattern before you add it to your shopping cart, and save $1 on the pair.

Launch Discount

Now, as I only just released the Polyhedral Balls a couple of weeks ago, you’re probably wishing you’d waited to buy it so you could get the combined-purchase discount, but don’t worry – I’ve figured out a way for you to get the discount too!

If you’ve already bought Polyhedral Balls, all you need to do is add the Gaming Dice Expansion Pack pattern to your shopping cart, together with anything else ($5 minimum), then use the code GAMERSRULE at checkout to get your discount! (Valid until end of June 2012.)

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!

I’ve been planning for a long time to create Expansion Packs that extend the value of patterns you’ve already bought without you having to pay the full price again for something similar. I’m very interested to see how well this first one works out. There’ll be more to come! 😀

That’s right, it’s my 3rd commissioned design – the Chameleon!

Thank you to my chameleon pledgers – this design was especially fun for me, as I could run out into the garden to consult with my ‘pet’ (actually wild) chameleon, Kermit, whenever I had a shape or proportion question 😀

Chameleons are probably the most fascinating of lizards because of their unique physiological adaptations. Here are a few of the most interesting chameleon facts for you!

Chameleon Fun Facts

• There are well over 150 species of chameleon, ranging from under 1″ to 30″ in length.
• Most chameleons are found in Africa and Madagascar.
• A chameleon shoots its amazingly long tongue at its insect prey. The tongue is as long as its body and has a suction cup on the end to capture the insect.
• Chameleons move slowly for camouflage, with a swaying motion like a leaf blowing in the breeze.
• Chameleon colour changes are usually due to stress or other emotions, not for camouflage as popularly believed.

I can attest that chameleons are very hard to spot if they want to stay hidden! I’ve spent hours playing ‘where’s Kermy’ in my garden, and sometimes I find him on a branch I swear was empty moments before 😀

Kermy is a Cape Dwarf Chameleon, and he obviously influenced my design decisions – especially with the bright green colour – but my aim was to create the archetypal chameleon without getting too fussy with excessive details. So here are the factors I needed to build into my design:

• Chameleons have large eyes, but their eyelids are fused together leaving only a small opening for them to see through. Each eye can swivel independently through 180° so chameleons can hunt and look for predators in all directions simultaneously.
• Chameleons have amazing Y-shaped feet to grip onto branches. (They actually still have 5 toes on each foot: the toes are just joined together into forward- and backward-pointing groups.)
• A chameleon’s prehensile tail can be held straight out for balance, curled around a branch for stability when climbing, or coiled tightly when asleep.

Some species have large horns, spines, crests or stripes, so, if you’re feeling especially creative and want to make a different type of chameleon, you could crochet extra pieces and add them. Of course, chameleons are found in almost every colour: red, blue, yellow, brown, orange; the easiest modification would just be to make one in a different colour – or wouldn’t a chameleon look amazing crocheted in a variegated yarn?

This design does use pipe cleaners for poseability, so please, as always, be sensible and omit the wires from a toy for babies or young children. (I give tips in the pattern for how to make your chameleon still look good if you choose to omit the wires.)

(A little note about my Commissions process – it’s still going strong – in fact, my 4th and 5th commissions were fully pledged before I even had a chance to complete this one! I didn’t anticipate this level of demand when I set up the commissions process, so I’ll be making some more changes later today or tomorrow – see my next blog post for details.)

With my arm for scale – he’s about 8″ long with his tail fully coiled up!

If you pledged towards the commission, you should have already received your copy of the pattern. Otherwise, if you’d like to make a chameleon of your own – or a whole troop in different colours – you can now pick up the Chameleon crochet pattern from the PlanetJune shop! I hope you like it 🙂

If you’re not quite ready to buy though, how about queuing Chameleon on ravelry so you don’t forget about it?

Not only fun to roll, stack, throw, and catch, these Polyhedral (‘many-faced’) Balls are very special: they are crocheted versions of the five Platonic solids; the only five geometric solid shapes possible where every face is identical and the same number of faces meet at each vertex (corner). Fun and educational!

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

Or, buy the Polyhedral Balls crochet pattern right now and download it instantly from the PlanetJune shop 🙂

I carefully designed the component shapes so that (within the limits of 1 round of crochet) the finished balls are all the same size. And my construction and edging methods mean that they don’t turn into spheres when you stuff them – the sides stay relatively flat without any hidden reinforcements, which not only makes them simpler to crochet together, but with no rigid plastic inside the balls, these are totally child-safe toys, made from only yarn and stuffing.

As well as being great as toys for kids to play with, they make good stress toys for adults! Plus I’ve discovered an excellent concentration/relaxation game: try balancing them all, one on top of the other – it is possible (provided the tetrahedron is always on the top), but surprisingly difficult to get all 5 to balance. You’ll see I managed it for my cover pictures – there’s no photo trickery there 🙂

The 5 Platonic solids, L-R: Cube (6 sides), Octahedron (8 sides), Icosahedron (20 sides), Dodecahedron (12 sides), Tetrahedron (4 sides)

If you’re not tempted yet by the fun or math-geeky aspects of these balls, here’s one more fact that might persuade you: these are no-sew patterns. 100% crocheted, you only need a yarn needle to weave in a few ends and you’re finished! And most of the ends are cunningly hidden on the inside, so even the end-weaving is very minimal too.

This pattern includes:

• Crochet instructions for the 5 component shapes
• A step-by-step photo tutorial for how to crochet the special edging
• Right- and left-handed step-by-step assembly diagrams, if you’d like to assemble your balls in the same order I did (leaving the minimum number of ends to weave in)
• Tips for speedier assembly and less yarn ends
• A special technique to improve the look of the finished corners

This is also a modular pattern: although it includes all the detailed instructions you need to be able to recreate these balls perfectly – 16 pages total – if you’d like to save on paper and ink, you can choose to print only the pages with the pieces you need: a) the crochet patterns, b) the general assembly photo tutorial and tips, c) the right-handed assembly order diagrams and/or d) the left-handed assembly order diagrams. If all you want to do is print the crochet patterns for the 5 component shapes, that’s all included on one page! I’m doing my bit for the environment 🙂

Gamers take note!
Now, I don’t know how much of a geek/RPG audience I have, but there’s an obvious application to these balls that is just missing one little piece: with this set, we have a d4, d6, d8, d12, and d20… We’re just missing a d10 to have a complete set of gaming dice! The construction and ridged edging of these balls mean that, as well as being a cute decorative set, they can actually even be used like real dice: they’ll always land on one face. (To actually use one as a die it’s best to throw it up in the air, spinning, and let it land – as it’s large but lightweight, unless you have a large area to roll it across, you’ll get a more random result if you throw it in the air first.)

The only problem is that a d10 is not a platonic solid – its shape is a little more complicated, as each of the 10 sides are slightly truncated kite shapes. I can do it, of course, but it would take a little more time, and trial and error, to figure out a) the right shape for a d10, and b) the right size so that the finished ball would match the rest of the set. So, the question is, would there be a demand for a 10-sided dice ball to complete this set?

If so, I’ll design an add-on to this pattern that would include:

• A truncated pentagonal trapezohedron (better known as a d10 to gamers) ball
• Instructions for how to properly label the sides of all 6 balls to turn them into a set of functional gaming dice (embroidered numbers would look great for this, or fabric painted numbers would be a far easier option if you’re not confident in your embroidery skills!)

So please do let me know in the comments if you’d be interested in buying the add-on pattern. I mentioned it on Facebook yesterday and I’ve already had a small positive response, so I need to know if there are more interested gamers/geeks (or people with gamers in the family – what better Christmas present than a set of giant crocheted gaming dice?!) before I design the d10. I’d do it with my commissions process, but of course I’m not going to charge anyone $6 for an add-on pattern!

But, for now, if you’d like to, you can pick up the Polyhedral Balls pattern in my shop 🙂

Hope you like it!

Here’s my second design commissioned using my new Commissions process: a Platypus! Thank you to everyone who commissioned this design from me – I hope you like the end result…

You probably already know that the platypus is a highly unusual-looking animal. When it was first discovered, the specimen was thought to be a hoax (like a jackalope) assembled from a beaver and a duck!

Platypus Fun Facts

• Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) are only found in eastern Australia.
• They are monotremes (egg-laying mammals).
• Platypus are semi-aquatic. They live in burrows and hunt for their food (insects and shellfish) along river bottoms.
• It’s almost impossible to breed platypus in captivity, which is why very few people have seen one in real life – you won’t see them in many zoos.
• The plural of platypus is sometimes written as platypus, platypuses, platypi, or platypodes!

I thought I had a pretty good idea what a platypus should look like, based on toys, cartoons, and the description of ‘beaver + duck’, but when I started my research I found I was wrong; a google image search shows a huge confusing variety, so I had to learn a lot more about them before I could truly understand what I was looking at. I watched the platypus section of David Attenborough’s wonderful The Life of Mammals over and over to see what they look like in motion, and spent a long time researching platypus features so I could make my design accurate. Here’s what I found:

• Although all 4 platypus feet are webbed, the front feet are hugely oversized and used for paddling. The back feet are smaller and used only for steering while swimming.
• A platypus uses its tail to store fat reserves, so a healthy platypus does not have a flat tail like a beaver’s tail.
• Platypus eyes are located just back from the beak. It keeps its eyes closed while swimming and uses electrolocation to detect food with receptors on its sensitive bill.
• It’s very easy to understand why people thought the platypus was a hoax: the base of the bill has a really interesting shape which makes the bill look like it’s been stuck onto the front of the face and doesn’t belong there.

So I took all these facts and built them into my design to make it more realistic. My design uses a couple of neat tricks for shaping the beak and feet/legs, but it’s still easy to crochet – I always try to find that balance for my patterns.

It turned out to be more of a design challenge than I’d anticipated, but, several beak and foot prototypes later, I’m very happy with the result – the final shaping techniques are simple and elegant, and I think he looks really sweet. As a fun extra touch, his webbed feet are also slightly poseable – you can move them around to make him ‘swim’ 🙂

I wonder which design will be commissioned next… (By the way, I have many more designs I’m also working on, so don’t worry if nothing else from the list is fully pledged for a while – there are other PlanetJune designs in the works!)

If you pledged towards the commission, you should have already received your copy of the pattern. Otherwise, if you’d like to make a platypus of your own, you can now pick up the Platypus crochet pattern from the PlanetJune shop! I hope you like it 🙂

If you’re not quite ready to buy though, how about queuing Platypus on ravelry so you don’t forget about it?

My first marsupial design is here, and it’s a koala!

Koala was the first fully-pledged design using my new commissions process, and I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who trusted my design ability enough to pledge towards this design! I hope I’ve met (or exceeded!) your expectations 🙂

I thought I pretty much knew what a koala looked like before I started my design. It was only once I started researching, though, that I realised why every toy koala I’ve seen before has looked wrong, somehow: they all have flat faces and only the black nose sticks out from the face. It turns out that, viewed in profile, koalas have quite pointy faces, with the nose at the tip, so that became a part of my design challenge…

Between the shaped legs, the poseable arms, the one-piece head and body, and the pointy face, I set the bar pretty high and it took longer than I was expecting to get everything right. Even when everything looked good in pieces, once I started to stitch it all together I had to make several more changes until I really felt like I’d got it all right. But, finally, I looked at it, and yes, it had all clicked into place to give me a koala that’s (I think) a perfect blend of realistic and cute.

The koala is a nice sturdy 7″ tall and his arms are poseable at the shoulders. (Although I didn’t do this with mine, if yours will be a toy for a child you could add some velcro or a press stud to his hands so they can grasp together and he can cling onto things – I think that would be really cute!)

I hope you’ll enjoy making the koala too – there are some pretty clever shaping tricks in this pattern, so I think you’ll have fun seeing it take shape under your hook. But don’t be scared – it’s no more complicated than any of my other patterns, and I have 23 step-by-step assembly photos so your koala will turn out absolutely perfectly too!

You can pick up the Koala pattern right now from my shop – with a special launch discount for this week only! If you’re not quite ready to buy though, how about queuing Koala on ravelry so you don’t forget about it?

Pattern Survey: When you look at the Koala pattern, you may notice that it looks a little different to all my other patterns: I’ve updated the layout to have less wasted space and to include the new PlanetJune logo. I’ve also taken this opportunity to add some more useful details (finished size, US/UK stitch conversions, and more) that haven’t previously been included in my patterns. Before I launch into the massive undertaking of updating my other 100+ patterns to include the new layout and added info, I wonder if you wouldn’t mind letting me know if there’s anything else you’d like to see in my patterns, so I can make all the improvements at once?

If you can spare a minute to help me this week, please compare the Koala pattern PDF with any of my other (non-donationware) pattern PDFs, and then fill in this 1-minute survey to let me know what you think. I want my patterns to be as good as possible, so this is your chance to tell me if there’s anything I could improve! Thanks for your time – I really appreciate it.

A little note about pledging: now the koala is complete, I’m ready to start designing the next commission to be fully pledged! But, I currently have 15(!) other designs in various stages of progress (don’t even ask how that happened…) so I have plenty to keep me busy until that happens! If there’s another design on the commissions list that you’d like to pledge towards, that would be great, but there will be new PlanetJune patterns coming, either way – I’m keeping the non-commissioned ones as surprises until they’re finished 🙂

Bunnies are one of the most commonly-designed toys – maybe second only to the ubiquitous teddy bear. I’ve even designed 3 different bunnies myself, previously. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a realistically-shaped amigurumi rabbit, which is strange when you think about it, because real bunnies (especially babies) are one of the cutest things you’ll ever see!

We could all use a little more cuteness in our lives, so I decided to do something about that, in the form of my new Baby Bunnies crochet pattern:

My Dwarf, Angora and Lop bunnies are so adorably tiny – about 4.5″ (12cm) long – that they can sit in the palm of your hand – just like real baby bunnies!

Meet the Bunnies

1. Dwarf
There was a time when I was desperate for a grey Netherland Dwarf rabbit. With their short ears and big eyes, I thought they were absolutely irresistible. My dream of a bunny of my own didn’t work out (although I ended up with the world’s most intelligent guinea pig instead, so that was okay!) but now, 20+ years(!) later, I finally have my little grey dwarf bunny:

FYI, while researching this breed, I discovered that this solid grey colouring is actually called ‘blue self’ in the rabbit breed standard – just like with cats!

2. Angora
Ever since I made my alpaca from alpaca yarn, I’ve been planning a series of natural fibre amigurumi, of fibre-producing animals made from their own yarn. With that in mind, I bought one precious 22g skein of locally-produced angora a couple of years ago – it was the only one I could find in my budget, and was unfortunately a 2-ply laceweight yarn: not exactly ideal for amigurumi! Here’s how to turn laceweight into worsted with a minimum of effort (a ball winder is essential though!):

1. Wind the skein into a ball.
2. Hold both the outside and centre ends together, and wind them together into another ball.
3. Repeat step 2 with the doubled yarn, to make a ball with 4 thicknesses of yarn wound together.

Now, this isn’t exactly ideal; the new ‘plies’ aren’t twisted together, so you have to be careful to pick up all 4 strands of yarn with your hook as you form every stitch. But it was sooooo worth it to get to work with this angora yarn: although it took concentration to make sure I was grabbing all 4 strands with my hook, the yarn was deliciously soft and a real pleasure to work with. A little part of me did worry that I was ‘wasting’ this high-quality fibre, but, now I see the end result, I don’t regret it at all:

I wish you could reach out and touch her through your screen; words don’t do justice to how amazingly soft and fluffy she is!

3. Lop
Rounding out the party, I just had to add a baby lop to the collection. I couldn’t stop saying “awwww!” while I was looking up reference photos for this one; do a Google image search for baby lop bunny and you’ll see what I mean. Go on, do it now so you can see what I mean; I’ll wait… Right? Ahhh, the cuteness!

* * *

I’d love to take the credit for my clever timing with this design, but when I started it in January, it didn’t even occur to me that this would be a perfect design for Easter and the upcoming spring season. (I put that down to southern hemisphere confusion – it’s hard to think about Easter when you’re in the middle of summer.) But now, serendipitously, Easter is 6 weeks away, so it’s the perfect time to start making bunnies galore. The March PlanetJune CAL (more details nearer the time) will be Easter-themed, so I’m hoping to see a lot of adorable bunnies in amongst the crocheted Easter Eggs this year 😀

Tempted to make an armful of bunnies of your own? You can pick up the pattern right now from the shop – it even has a special price until the end of February! If you’re not quite ready to buy though, how about queuing Baby Bunnies on ravelry so you don’t forget about it?

I can hardly believe I’ve finally reached this point – this has probably been my longest crochet design process to date – so I’m very happy to present to you my first patterns of 2012: Succulent Collections 1 & 2!

I spent weeks (during my break from designing in December) researching all the different types of succulents to try to find a selection that would look interesting and varied, are fairly common, and would work when translated into crochet. I narrowed it down to 10, to give me a little wiggle room if a couple of them didn’t work out the way I was hoping. And here are the final 8:

Succulent Collection 1, L-R: Spoon Jade ‘ET Fingers’; Sempervivum ‘Hen & Chicks’; Euphorbia Obesa ‘Baseball Plant’; Adromischus Cooperi ‘Plover Eggs Plant’

Succulent Collection 2, L-R: Gasteria ‘Ox Tongue Plant’; Senecio Rowleyanus ‘String of Pearls’; Lithops ‘Living Stones’; Kalanchoe Luciae ‘Flapjack Plant’

While I didn’t know this at the time I began my succulent project, I learned through my research that while cacti are a type of succulent, cacti come from the Americas, but other succulents come from Africa. And, beyond that, it turns out that 7 of the 8 species I ended up making are actually native to South Africa – such a coincidence! I had no idea, although I do see succulents all over the place here; it makes sense to have water-retaining plants in a predominantly hot dry environment.

I’ve come up with all kinds of new crochet tricks and techniques for these patterns, and, as always, they are explained in fully illustrated detail in the patterns, so you can feel confident about tackling these even if you’ve only made very simple amigurumi before. As with the cacti, each Succulent Collection is available separately for $8, or you can get the second collection for almost half price when you buy both together for the ridiculously low price of $12.50.

Click through to see the super-sized version at Flickr 🙂
Back L-R: Cactus Collection 2, Cactus Collection 1
Front L-R: Succulent Collection 1, Succulent Collection 2

Just to make things even more exciting, as you can see from the picture above, I’ve made the Succulents on the same scale as my Cactus Collections 1 & 2, so now you can mix-and-match between all 4 plant collections to make a completely customized cactus/succulent garden, or a cute selection of mini pots with individual plants! (Or even a mini jungle like mine!)

Handy links to the patterns:
Succulent Collections 1 & 2
Succulent Collection 1
Succulent Collection 2
Cactus Collections 1 & 2
Cactus Collection 1
Cactus Collection 2

And, in a case of excellent timing, the PlanetJune February CAL will be a Plant-Along, so please join us at the PlanetJune Ravelry group if you’d like to participate in the crochet-along and make succulents and cacti (and any of my other plant patterns) with the rest of the group! The CAL officially starts on Feb 1st, but if you want to pick up the patterns now and get a head start, I won’t tell 😉

I’ve spent a huge amount of time making these succulent patterns into something special, so I really hope you’ll enjoy them! Please let me know what you think of them…

A couple of months ago, I put out a call in my Ravelry group for Christmas or Holiday design requests, and the most popular idea was for a square gift box, worked in the round. It’s easy enough to crochet a square base, but working the sides in one piece in the round means that the resulting box won’t look square – there are no corners, and, with every round, the square becomes more and more circular…

I decided to rise to the challenge and develop a circular box, worked in one piece in the round, that still looks square. I actually thought I’d already come up with the perfect technique, but, after testing it, I wasn’t happy with the result, so I went back to the drawing board. I created at least 10 cornering techniques and compared samples of each to find the ultimate corner, but I think it was worth the effort, because these boxes undeniably have real square corners:

I chose rich peacock hues for my boxes, with a lighter shade of each colour for the trim, but of course you can change the look by using traditional Christmas colours, or any other colours you like.

Each box has a removable lid, and they are sized so that, with the lids on, the three can nest neatly inside each other. The smallest is 2.5″ (6cm) wide and the largest is 4.5″ (11cm) wide.

You can also use them, with or without lids, as pretty little desk or bathroom organisers, or to display trinkets…

3 of the small boxes without lids

If you’d like to try out my special no-sew, worked-in-a-spiral, square corner technique, the Gift Boxes pattern includes full written instructions, and a bonus 3 page step-by-step photo tutorial at the end of the pattern. I laid it out like this so you’ll have plenty of photos to make sure you’ll definitely be able to understand how to make the corners, but you can save on ink by not printing the last 3 pages!

The Gift Boxes crochet pattern is now available in my shop, or you can bundle it with any other 2 PlanetJune Accessories patterns by picking up a custom set of any 3 Accessories patterns.

Note ready to make it yet? Add it to your Ravelry queue!

I hope you like them!