The fourth annual PlanetJune Reindeer Games CAL begins tomorrow! The Reindeer Games is the annual PlanetJune end-of-year crochet-along and online community event, and you can join by submitting photos of your PJ projects to the gallery, and chatting with us in the CAL threads on Discord and Ravelry. Everyone is very welcome, and I can’t wait to see the gallery of beautiful projects that will emerge as we head toward the end of the year – I hope you’ll join us!

Reindeer Games 2024 CAL

Crochet anything PlanetJune as part of the PlanetJune Reindeer Games 2024 (Friday, Nov 1 – Tuesday, Dec 31).

The idea of the games is to challenge yourself by starting and finishing crochet project(s) before the end of the year. It’s just for fun, like a CAL but you get to choose your projects – anything PlanetJune, including projects from my books – and earn virtual awards!

For the fullest experience, join in the fun in one of the PlanetJune Community groups. Look for the Reindeer Games 2024 thread on Ravelry or the #reindeer-games-2024 channel on Discord. (You can also participate by submitting your projects directly to the gallery through the new online form.)

Check out the Reindeer Games site where you can find full instructions, the list of stalls (categories) and antlers (bonus awards) you can win, the 2024 games stats and project gallery, and archives from the previous years’ games.

It’s always so much fun – we’re a cozy group of crafty friends, crocheting and chatting away. As we’re based all over the world, we can compare our holiday traditions, share recipes, and encourage each other as we crochet. We’d love to welcome you to the party in either of our groups.

Project Ideas

You can enter the Reindeer Games by making absolutely anything based on a PlanetJune pattern (or something from any of my books) – so you have hundreds of crochet patterns to choose from (including dozens of free options, if cashflow is tight).

Realistic animals, elegant accessories, unique toys, seasonal decor – there’s something for everyone…

Take a look at the PlanetJune shop for more pattern inspiration, or grab your copy of any of my books and pick a pattern. 🙂

Join Us!

I do hope you’ll join us for the Reindeer Games 2024 – it’s going to be so much fun, and I can’t wait to see the project gallery filled to the brim again with our beautiful crocheted projects by the end of the year. Whether you’re trying to finish some WIPs, crocheting Christmas gifts, making pieces to sell, or treating yourself to that PlanetJune pattern you’ve had your eye on, we’ll cheer you on as you work towards your crochet goals, and we’re ready to celebrate your successes with you!

Have you seen the weird and wonderful gourds that are sold for decorating at this time of year? Gourds are fascinating – they are in the same family as squashes and pumpkins, but they are grown as ornamentals, not for eating, and they’ve developed into all sorts of unusual shapes and bright colours. And, as the fall season rolls around, I’m thrilled to finally unveil a project I started last year but took extra time to perfect: my new collection of ornamental gourd crochet patterns!

This time last year, I was inspired to design a set of decorative gourds, but I couldn’t quite nail all the shapes I was looking for, so my prototypes and notes have been sitting and waiting for Fall 2024 to be brought to life. And I’m so glad I waited – the extra time and perspective has led to some excellent new techniques for making amigurumi-style gourds with unique shapes and texture!

Meet the Gourds

The Ornamental Gourds Collection includes two sets of realistic life-sized gourds, each with three different patterns (or you can grab the complete collection for a bargain price). Most real-life gourds come in a wide variety of colours, and my photos show a couple of sample colourways for each gourd, but you can mix and match colours and styles for a near-infinite variety – just like real-life gourds!

Ornamental Gourds Set 1 includes (above, L-R) Goblin Eggs, Warty Pear and Autumn Wings gourds.

Ornamental Gourds Set 2 includes (above, L-R) Mini Bottle, Spoon and Crown of Thorns gourds.

(Side note: don’t you just love the names of these varieties? They’re just as fun as all the different shapes and colours!)

About the Patterns

The patterns within each set are arranged in order of increasing difficulty, from simpler designs that are easy and fast to work up to more complex designs that use new innovations to build in shape and texture. With just basic stitches, you’ll see the realistic bumps, ridges, and points take shape as you crochet, without leaving any holes that stuffing can peek through.

The patterns include full step-by-step illustrated appendices for both right- and left-handers that walk you through each of my special techniques. Each gourd is worked in a single piece (plus the stem) – no sewing required!

Links to Buy

You can buy each pattern set individually, or save money when you buy the whole collection!

• Ornamental Gourds Set 1 >>
• Ornamental Gourds Set 2 >>
• The complete Ornamental Gourds Collection >>

Or, if you’re not quite ready to buy, why not favourite/queue them on Ravelry so you don’t forget about them?

Ornamental Gourds Set 1:

Ornamental Gourds Set 2:

I’m really happy with this new collection. I think they look very much like real gourds at first glance, while also staying true to my signature clean style – I hope you agree! The shapes and textures of these palm-sized gourds are such fun to crochet, and I hope they’ll also bring a touch of seasonal style to your decorating this year. Now, I just have to ask: which gourd is your favourite?!

I haven’t done much hand knitting since I bought my knitting machine in 2020. But last winter, inspired by the projects being shared in the PJ Discord group, I got the itch to pick up the needles again. Knitting is such a relaxing pastime for me, and I’ve missed it! Crocheting larger things with repetitive patterns is relaxing too, of course, but most of my crochet is small amigurumi, so it doesn’t have that same relaxing rhythm. And here’s the result:

Hello! Look what I knitted!

I started this sweater in 2019, based on my ribbed sweater design that I’ve made a couple of times before: the green cardigan in 2015, and the teal pullover version in 2017. My concept for this pink version was to use a lighter weight yarn and a narrower all-over rib pattern to make a more lightweight version of the same basic design.

But my progress ground to a halt: the yarn felt a bit rough on my fingers so the knitting wasn’t a lovely tactile experience; I wasn’t sure about the pink colour (bought on sale), and I got bored with working on it. I hadn’t even decided whether this piece was going to be a sweater or cardigan when I abandoned it, with the back mostly done and nothing else even started!

I picked it back up in February, finished the back and sleeves according to my original plan, and decided on a v-neck cardigan for the front.

After seaming the pieces together, I tried on the cardigan and decided it was slightly more fitted than I’d like, so I decided to make a slightly wider buttonband to give it a tiny bit more ease at the front. One of the benefits of designing as you go is getting to make last-minute customizations while you knit!

I also added a design improvement from my first version of this cardigan. When you wear a cardigan, the buttonholes typically want to pull away from the centre, which means the buttons don’t sit in the middle of the buttonband when the sweater is buttoned up. I countered this effect by offsetting the buttonholes to be set away from the edge of the band instead of centering them on the band:

L: The buttonholes are offset to the left side of the buttonband
R: The buttons sit in the centre of the buttonband when the sweater is buttoned

I wasn’t sure about using metal buttons on a knitted sweater, but I wanted small buttons to match the scale of this sweater, and I had dozens of these buttons in my stash (from a thrift store find of a giant bag of mixed buttons) and I wasn’t keen on making or buying special buttons for a cardigan I wasn’t even sure I’d like. Note to self: pullover sweaters are much faster and easier when it comes to finishing!

In fact, I had so many of these buttons that I decided to use a second of the same button as my anchor button on the inside of the sweater, even though they’ll never be seen. And I like the end result with the metal buttons – what do you think?

Once everything was completely finished with all the ends woven in, I tried it on properly and quickly realised that my usual design choice of making extra-long sleeves to keep my wrists warm wasn’t really appropriate for a lighter summer-weight sweater… I briefly considered unravelling a couple of inches from the ends of the sleeves, but turning up impromptu cuffs is easier, and looks fine!

And the end result of this project is just that: fine. I like it well enough; it fits well enough; the colour is nice enough; the feel is nice enough; the buttons are good enough… While I’m not wowed by anything in particular about this sweater, it’ll be a useful addition to my wardrobe for those in-between weather days, so I’m calling that a win 😉

Best of all, this project has been a good re-introduction to knitting for me. Now I’m looking forward to starting my next knitting project, to keep my hands occupied once the gardening season ends!

When I designed my Duck and Goose crochet pattern last winter, I was already planning for future Canada Goose and Mallard expansion packs. I also designed my Ducklings and Goslings pattern so the babies would be ready to complete the families once their parents were finished. Now that moment has arrived, and my Duck and Goose Collection is complete!

Click to see a larger photo of the Duck and Goose Collection – there’s a lot to see here 🙂

Now you can make four different amigurumi duck and goose families: white ducks with single-coloured ducklings, white geese with single-coloured goslings, and Canada Goose and Mallard families each with their own distinctively-coloured babies. Yay!

Let’s take a closer look at the new patterns:

Canada Goose Expansion Pack

Also known as Canadian geese or ‘cobra chickens’, Canada geese are native to Canada and the northern US, but have also been introduced into many other countries. They are fiercely protective of their babies and will hiss and and even attack if you approach too closely during breeding season, but every year I enjoy having to wait while a family of Canada geese crosses the road ahead of my car – the fluffy goslings are so adorable!

The Canada Goose Expansion Pack includes all the modifications you’ll need to convert the white goose from the Duck and Goose pattern into a realistic Canada goose with its iconic black head and neck and white ‘chinstrap’.

Mallards Expansion Pack

Mallards are the most common species of wild duck, and they are found naturally throughout most of the northern hemisphere. Did you know that almost all domestic ducks, no matter their colouring, are descended from mallards?

The Mallards Expansion Pack includes all the modifications you’ll need to convert the white duck from the Duck and Goose pattern into a pair of realistic mallards. The drake is the star of this show with his classic green head and bold markings. While he’s what most people think of when they hear the word mallard, I’ve also included a female with a simple but clever brown eye stripe to round out your mallard family!

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.

Purchase Options

Okay, you have several bundle options here, so I’ll go through them all for you:

• If you already have the Duck and Goose pattern, you can buy the Canada Goose Expansion Pack and/or Mallards Expansion Pack individually from the shop.
• If you haven’t yet bought Duck and Goose, you can buy it and add-on either (or both) expansion packs to save 50c on each pack you add.
• Or, for the best deal of all, pick up the complete Duck and Goose Collection, which includes all four of the patterns picture above (the babies too!) for a special price!

I have listings for any possible combination you could want in the shop (search for ‘waterfowl’ to see them all!), but if you’re confused, feel free to email me (or comment below) and I’ll help you to get the best deal on the patterns you want.

And, if you’re not ready to crochet your favourite waterfowl right now, you can heart and queue them on Ravelry so you don’t forget about them:

Canada Goose:

Mallards:

Duck and Goose:

Ducklings and Goslings:

I’m so happy with this pattern collection, and I hope you’ll love them too! Which duck or goose pattern is your favourite?

I absolutely loved growing and eating cherry tomatoes last year, and for 2024 my main gardening goal was to improve my tomato-growing skills. Living in Canada, the growing season is short, so I have to make the most of it before we’re back to snow! But the more you discover about gardening, the more you realise how much there is still to learn: so many varieties of tomato, so many different ways to grow them, and so much conflicting advice… How do you decide who to believe and which advice to follow?

Thanks to my science background, my answer is always to do my own experiments and see what actually works best for me! So I decided to try a lot of different things in my 2024 garden, and build what I learn into a solid plan for my future tomatoes. I filled my garden with 22 tomato plants of 12 different varieties (plus 2 more plants kept indoors).

A selection of the cherry tomatoes I grew in 2024

And here’s a small part of my tomato jungle!

Of course, I’m not saying my results are the definitive answers – I’m not an expert, and with only one plant to compare in each experiment, my results aren’t statistically significant. But I wanted to document everything for myself, and who knows? Maybe you’ll find some of it interesting or even helpful if you want to try growing cherry tomatoes like these!

For each of my experiments, I used the same type of tomato for both cases and tried to only change the variable I was testing for to give a fair comparison. There are too many other factors at play to make this a scientifically valid test, but I’ve still learnt a lot from trying so many things this season! Read on to find out what I discovered…

It’s been a year since my pup Maggie recovered from her surgery to remove a tumour from her shoulder. It was such an exhausting and traumatic time, but she made a full recovery and so far there’s no sign of reoccurrence, and she’s a very happy, healthy and energetic almost-12 year old!

Now that things are better, I want to document my solution for keeping her wound protected from licking and covered to prevent infection without using a plastic cone or bandages. I hope someone will find this post in the future if they need tips for protecting their dog or cat’s shoulder wound after surgery.

Avoiding the ‘Cone of Shame’

When Maggie came home from her surgery, I wasn’t expecting her tiny half-inch lump to have needed such extensive surgery. The biopsy later revealed they only just got it all, with less than a mm of clearance(!), so the surgeon did exactly the right thing.

Her incision was massive, running from her neck all the way down to her elbow. She clearly felt terrible, and she was in so much pain. She was supposed to wear a hard plastic cone around her neck for two whole weeks, but she looked utterly miserable in it and I couldn’t make her do that.

(Trigger warning: Don’t click the following link if the sight of fresh stitches will upset you! Here’s a pic of her when she first came home with her cone.)

Luckily, the inflatable collar I’d bought for my much-missed cat Maui fit her perfectly. These are so much more comfortable for a dog or cat than a hard plastic cone – it’s more like a travel neck pillow than a medical device! The neck size is adjustable, you can customize the amount of inflation for comfort, and the soft cover is removable so you can wash it.

It’s easy to remove so your pet can eat comfortably, and then refasten it around their neck with the velcro strip. I think this is a much more comfortable option for pets, and it provides a built-in comfy pillow for nap time!

Note: An inflatable collar isn’t a perfect replacement for a cone in all cases – as you can see from the above photo, Maggie could still reach her paws and tail while wearing the inflatable collar. If she needed to be stopped from licking those areas, I would have tried a soft cone collar instead.

Custom T-shirt (a dog Hospital Gown!)

Wounds apparently heal better with airflow vs tight bandages, so I was instructed to protect the incision site from infection by putting a t-shirt or something on her. That was a challenge, as she couldn’t move or bend her leg without pulling on her stitches, so I realised I needed a shirt that tied or zipped up the back, so it would be easier to put on.

I’ve made t-shirts for Maggie before, by cutting down my old t-shirts to fit her. (Having a small white dog who loves to walk in all weather means she doesn’t stay white for very long at certain times of year! The t-shirts don’t only look cute: they work really well to protect her forelegs and tummy from getting filthy during mud season.)

Maggie in her anti-mud shirt

So I jumped into gear while my sweet girl was sleeping off her sedatives, and got to work on a new shirt – luckily I knew her measurements from the notes I kept from her old shirts. If you need a similar solution you could save yourself some time by buying a dog t-shirt – or using an old one you already have – as your starting point. I needed to keep myself busy until Maggie woke up, so I made a new shirt from scratch.

To make the shirt easy to remove, I cut it all the way down the middle of the back, and planned to stabilize each side of the cut edge with cotton twill tape. While knit jersey fabric doesn’t fray, a cut edge will curl up, and the non-stretchy twill tape prevents that. I also thought that attaching the ribbons to a strong non-stretchy base would spread the load of the attachment points – I didn’t want the ribbons to rip out of the t-shirt fabric as Maggie got more active.

I measured and cut two pieces of twill tape to match the length of the shirt, and then securely stitched one end of four lengths of ribbon at right angles to each tape, to form the ties. (If your shirt is large enough to overlap at the back once you’ve cut it, you could use snaps or velcro instead, but I like that the ribbons make the shirt a bit more customizable; you can make a looser fit by leaving a gap between the two sides of the shirt when you tie the pairs of ribbons together.)

The final step was to attach one tape-with-ribbons to each cut side of the shirt back. This was a bit tricky, as jersey t-shirt fabric is so stretchy! I arranged the tape so the cut ends of the ribbons were sandwiched between the t-shirt and the tape, and I used lots of pins to hold the layers together so the jersey couldn’t stretch too much while I sewed each side of the twill tape down along the length of the shirt.

Right side (top): t-shirt fabric with two lines of stitching
Wrong side (bottom): twill tape with ribbons stitches to it at intervals

Although the stitching to attach the ribbons to the tape was a bit messy and my stitching lines are a bit wonky, the overall effect from the right side isn’t too bad, as you only see the two lines of stitching from where I attached the tape to the shirt. And I was going for function over form – I don’t think a recovery shirt needs to be beautifully finished! The important thing is that the ties hold securely and the shirt stays in place, and it did just that:

I could slip Maggie’s paws into the sleeves, then lift the sides of the shirt and tie the ribbons together down her back to secure it together, just like a hospital gown! (If it works for people, why not for a dog?!)

It worked really well – I could put the shirt on without causing any pain, and untie the top ribbons to check on the wound without needing to remove the whole thing.

My solution let Maggie relax as she recovered, with a comfortable loose covering protecting her wound. I kept the inflatable collar on her too, but I took it off when I could monitor her closely to make sure she wasn’t trying to lick the wound.

Maggie enjoyed convalescing in the sunshine in her ‘hospital gown’, and snoozing the rest of the day away with her inflatable pillow. When she was allowed to take some gentle walks again, I also made her a little crop top to keep the wound covered while it continued to heal without overheating her with the full t-shirt.

Sassy girl rocking her crop top!

The hardest part of Maggie’s recovery was supervising her full time to make sure she didn’t rip her stitches by running or jumping about too soon! How do you tell a dog they’re not allowed to move for weeks?!

I’m sure the fresh air helped her feel better – as you can see, she was very happy to be outside enjoying the sunshine with me while she recuperated! And I was happy to see that her wound stayed fully covered, no matter how much she rolled around on the grass.

Verdict

Despite the vet tech telling me Maggie would be left with a ‘gnarly scar’, she healed up incredibly well. She has a tiny scar remaining at the top of her leg (you can just see it as a redder spot in the photo below, before her fur fully grew back). She did sometimes get to lick that area by pushing up the t-shirt sleeves when she wasn’t wearing the inflatable collar, and that’s probably my fault for not always supervising her closely enough.

But the most important thing is that her wound healed cleanly, with no infections and no tumour remaining, and we don’t mind a small battle scar to remind us of what a survivor she is! Now she’s as happy and healthy as ever, and enjoying her garden again this summer without any silly clothes to slow her down 😉

Isn’t she a sweetie?

I hope you’ll never need the info from this post, but if your furbaby ever needs to recover from injury or surgery, I hope you’ll find something useful in Maggie’s recovery story.

I’m so happy to be able to re-release my Barn Owl crochet pattern with a new option that lets you choose the direction you want your owl to look!

I’ve always regretted that I wasn’t able to do this in the original pattern, but I was trying not to over-complicate the pattern. Now I’ve come up with an easy way to branch the pattern into the original straight-ahead option and the new turned-head option, and look how cute they are together…

Aren’t they an adorable pair?! Barn owls have always been my favourite owl, and this addition is the icing on the cake for me. Having a pair of barn owls in two different poses makes them look so dynamic and lifelike – I’m completely satisfied with my design now 🙂

About the Pattern

Barn Owl is an Expansion Pack for my Owl Collection pattern, a clever low-sew design. The head, body, legs and wings are all crocheted as one piece, giving you an elegant bird silhouette with the perfect owl posture and an effortlessly smooth result!

The Barn Owl Expansion Pack includes all the modifications required to crochet a Barn Owl with realistic face shape and markings. The original option has the owl looking straight ahead:

And the new additional option, presented as separate right-handed and left-handed versions for clarity, allows you to have your owl looking to the left or right (and also includes instructions for letting your owl look in any direction, so you can choose your favourite angle!)

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.

Links to Buy

• If you’ve already bought the Barn Owl pattern, this version is a free update for you! You can download the new PDF from My Patterns in your PlanetJune account.
• If you already own the Owl Collection, but not the Barn Owl, you can buy the Barn Owl Expansion Pack (including both Barn Owl options) individually for only $3.50.
• If you haven’t yet bought either, pick up the multipack of both owl patterns and you’ll save 50c on the pair.

I’m so happy with this update to my Barn Owl pattern. I love how the two options look together – it adds so much realism to have them in different poses, just like a real-life pair of owls! I hope you’ll love making them too 🙂

The Ravellenic Games – a two-week event hosted by Ravelry where participants challenge themselves to start and finish crochet/knitting projects, timed to coincide with a certain global sports competition – ended on Sunday. I wasn’t sure if we’d have a Team PlanetJune this year, as our Ravelry group has grown quieter, with most of our community activities moving to our more private and chat-friendly Discord. But I’m so glad we decided to go for it anyway!

From July 26th to August 11th 2024, our small but mighty team challenged ourselves to start and finish any crochet projects based on PlanetJune patterns (and those from my books), and look how well we did!

42 projects completed by Team PlanetJune in just over 2 weeks, and don’t they all look wonderful?

We had a lovely variety of projects: amigurumi animals, plants, accessories and home decor. You can see them all in the new Team PlanetJune Ravellenic Games Gallery. (And if you want to make any of these for yourself, clicking any photo in the gallery will take you to the pattern!)

It was such fun to see everyone picking projects to make and inspiring and cheering each other on to finish them, and the team spirit and camaraderie was a tonic for me, too. It’s been difficult to get back into the swing of my usual designing life after spending a year as a book publisher, so I challenged myself to complete a new design for the games. And look what happened: not one but four new PlanetJune birds sprang off my hook!

L-R: Mallard Drake, Mallard Duck, Barn Owl, Canada Goose

I don’t quite know where I found the energy to accomplish all this, although I did spend days, evenings and weekends crocheting up a storm, and enjoying it! I think it was a combination of the lure of the challenge plus the encouragement of my teammates; the more projects I completed, the more I thought “maybe I could fit in one more before the deadline…?” And, when you feel the call, stopping to do other things isn’t really an option 🙂

Where are the patterns? If you’d like to make these birds too, the patterns will all be coming! The pair of Mallards and the Canada Goose will each become an Expansion Pack for my Duck and Goose pattern in the coming months, and the new turned-head version of the Barn Owl will be a new option that I’ll add to the existing Barn Owl Expansion Pack for my main Owl Collection (and it’ll be a free upgrade, if you’ve already bought the Barn Owl pattern).

Although I didn’t intend this, 2024 looks like it’s shaping up to be the PlanetJune Year of Birds – which is a nice change after 2023’s Year of Snakes. I’m just going with it: following where the inspiration takes me is always the most joyous way, as you can probably tell by how prolific I’ve been this month!

I have been asking myself how I managed to create so much in such a short time, and the answer is… I didn’t, not really. Although I did all the prototyping and crocheting during the timeframe of the games, none of these is a new idea for me: I’ve been planning to make Mallard and Canada Goose expansion packs ever since I designed the original Duck and Goose pattern at the start of this year, and I’d already done the research and planning long before the games began. And I’d always wanted to make a Barn Owl with a turned head, although I decided against it in my original pattern (as it would over-complicate things), but the spirit of the games inspired me to go for the challenge. I’m so glad I did!

I think this event has been really good for my crojo (that’s crochet mojo, if you didn’t know) – a little boost to my confidence that shows I can get back into the saddle of regular designing again. But now I have to deal with the fallout: it’s going to be a long time before I can pick up my hook again, as I have all these new designs to write up, photograph, and turn into new patterns! Note to self: maybe one design at a time isn’t such a bad idea for the future…

So I’d like to give a huge thanks to everyone who joined Team PlanetJune for the games – I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!

And if you missed out, or just want more crochet-along fun, I’d love for you to join us this winter for the fourth annual PlanetJune Reindeer Games, starting November 1st! It’s like the Ravellenic Games, but way more relaxed, with a whole two months to crochet anything you want from my patterns and earn virtual medals.

Our CAL and online social event is always a fun way to end the year together. If you’d like a little nudge when it’s about to start, click here and I’ll send you a reminder!