PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

Everyone’s favourite pint-sized pup, the chihuahua, now comes in crochet form:

Chihuahua facts:

• The Chihuahua is the smallest breed of dog in the world.
• The breed originated in Mexico.
• A typical chihuahua only weighs between 2 and 6lb!
• Chihuahuas come in long-haired and short-haired varieties, and all sorts of colours.
• Famous chihuahuas include Bruiser from the movie Legally Blonde, Paris Hilton’s dog Tinkerbell, and the canine stars of the upcoming movie Beverly Hills Chihuahua

The AmiDogs Chihuahua measures just under 5″ long. If you’d like to make your own, the crochet pattern will be available shortly in the store. (For those who are still waiting for the Paint Set, it should be up in the next day or two!) If you’re on the mailing list, you’ll be e-mailed as soon as each new pattern is released.

I still have a list of other dog designs to work on in future, but please feel free to comment and add your requests for more breeds!

UPDATE: Looking for the pattern? You can find the AmiDogs Chihuahua crochet pattern in my shop.

Thank you so much for the Discworld love; I’m so happy you get what I was trying to do here. I also have some news: I contacted Terry Pratchett’s agent, to ask if there was any possibility that Terry could see my Discworld, and Colin kindly agreed to show the pics to Terry. And I have a reply from Colin about Terry Pratchett’s reaction:

He gave a quiet laugh and said, ‘Well, if you’re going to crochet Discworld then that’s the way to do it!’

Thank you, Terry! (And Colin.) This has made my day!

I thought I would share my happiness by revealing some more details of my Discworld project. I’ve had several requests from people wondering how I managed to accurately crochet in the landmasses of the Disc. I’m not intending this as a tutorial or method for you to follow – I just thought you might like to see the crazy method my mind came up with to crochetify the Discworld 🙂

First, I started by crocheting a plain blue circle for the underside of the Disc. I scanned this into the computer. Then I used the Discworld Mapp to sketch (with pencil and paper) a map of the landmasses and a rough guide for my colour changes. I scanned this into the computer too:

I edited my sketch to remove the white background and darken the lines to black to make them easier to see. I resized the two images so they were the same size, and then layered the map over the crocheted Disc:

Now for the slow part… but I figured it was better to make the mistakes digitally than to have to rip back when it came to the crocheting part. In my graphics software, I picked a paintbrush that was about the same size as one crocheted stitch, then began to colour in my map onscreen. I kept the coloured layer translucent, so I could still see the stitches beneath. Here’s a close-up, and the complete digitally-coloured map:

Lastly I turned off the black sketch layer, and printed my ‘pattern’:

With all that work done, I just had to reproduce my digital crochet in reality! No secret method here – just careful counting and colour changes.

When I had finished, I crocheted both discs together around the edges, to keep it together and give a subtle Rimfall effect. I also stitched the two discs together at various points across the surface (with blue yarn in the blue areas only, so it doesn’t show), to avoid any problems with it trying to puff up in the middle – it’s called the Disc, not the Lens 😉

Oh, and you may also be able to see from this pic that I used a variegated green yarn, so I chose the lighter green parts of the yarn to be closer to the Hub, fading to darker green towards the Rim. I just thought it added a little more depth:

That’s it! As I said before, it really was a labour of love, and it took much longer to design than to actually crochet! And now I can say it’s officially Pratchett-approved 🙂

You can, of course, buy the patterns for my Turtle and Elephants, if you are so inclined.

I hope you enjoyed this insight into the unusual way my mind works. Please leave me a comment if you did…

Today I have a new tutorial up at Folding Trees showing how to weave paper strips into a coloured checkerboard pattern. The greetings cards and bookmark I made (above) use strips cut from old magazine pages!

A PlanetJune story, by Fuzzy Bear

Thank you, Fuzzy Bear! I tried something a bit different from my usual animals with the paint set design. What do you think of it? Would you like to see more like this?

The pattern for the crocheted paintbrush, paint tube and palette will be coming soon. Don’t forget to sign up for my mailing list if you’d like to be notified when it’s available.

UPDATE: Looking for the patterns? You can find the Ami Paint Set crochet pattern and Fuzzy Bear crochet pattern in my shop.

You may remember my Offset Square Wrist Pincushion tutorial from a year ago. I still use my pig pincushion every time I work on a sewing project, and it’s really made a difference to me (no more lost pins to be discovered on the floor or stuck in the sofa weeks later!). But now I have the pins under control, I notice all the more how often I lose a needle. I’ve luckily never found one the painful way (by standing/sitting on it), although I did once find a lost needle embedded in the sole of my shoe! That was a lucky escape for my foot, as I rarely wear shoes in my house; I don’t think I’d be that lucky a second time, so it’s high time I fix this problem…

I still have some of the same pig fabric in my stash, so I designed a little needlebook to match the pincushion. Those little piggies still make me smile!

This needlebook has a ribbon and button closure, and two felt pages inside to accommodate the needles. As well as a variety of sizes of regular sewing needles, I’ve put some self-threading needles in the needlebook. (I first heard about these needles from Kathy and they really come in handy for the most boring part of a sewing project: finishing off all those loose ends of thread. If you machine sew, I do suggest you pick up a packet – they really speed up that process!)

The needlebook is large enough not to get lost but small enough to be convenient, and the needles stay safely inside the book until they are needed. I was thinking of adding a pocket too (for a needle threader and/or mini sewing scissors), but I think I’d prefer to keep it as it is.

I do love these quick easy projects, especially when they cost nothing because I have all the materials already! Plus, having a matched set makes me very happy. Hopefully my new needlebook will be just as useful as the pincushion has proved to be…

I’ve just reviewed this pattern for Folding Trees, and here’s the hummingbird card I made. Isn’t it gorgeous? And it looks a lot more complicated to make than it really is!

Click through to Folding Trees this week to read my review of the pattern and to enter our contest to win a pattern of your choice from Easy Cut Pop-up, the people who designed the amazing hummingbird above and many more wonderful pop-up card designs!

You can now see my review of the Easy Cut Pop-up pattern, below.

PS – Thank you to everyone for the Discworld love! Many of you have asked, so I’m in the process of writing another post about it, to give you a bit of insight into how I designed the Disc to make the landmasses – watch this space…

Review: Easy Cut Pop-up Cards

This review was originally published on my old papercraft site, Folding Trees.

Kirigami is a Japanese art similar to origami, but with kirigami you cut the paper as well as folding it, making it easier to create more complex shapes. Easy Cut Pop-up specialize in unique pop-up cards patterns with beautiful kirigami designs, such as the above koala and joey card. All their designs look wonderful, but are they really easy to make? I was given the opportunity to try one of their patterns, so I can now answer that question for you with this review!

I downloaded my pattern, the Hummingbird pattern, as a pdf file. The file includes the pattern pages and pages with pictorial instructions. The website also includes links to YouTube videos of each model being assembled – what a great idea! I would recommend you watch the video all the way through before you start your model, to get some familiarity with the process.

To begin, you need 3 or 4 sheets of letter-sized cardstock (you could probably also use heavyweight paper).

June’s Tip: at my local craft store, the only letter-sized cardstock I could find came in packs of 50 or 100 sheets, and the colours weren’t great either. Try checking out the scrapbooking section, which has individual sheets of paper and cardstock, in a much wider range of colours, patterns and textures. I bought 3 sheets of 12″x12″ scrapbook paper and trimmed them down to 8.5″x11″. Much cheaper, and I got to pick the colours I really wanted!

Print the pattern pages directly onto your cardstock. Score the sheets along all the dashed lines, then fold each sheet in half along the marked fold. Cut along all the solid lines with scissors, cutting through both thicknesses of cardstock. The scoring took only seconds to complete. The cutting took a little longer, because it pays to cut accurately along the lines. The advantage of these designs is that, as each piece is symmetrical, you cut both sides at once, saving on half the cutting!

June’s Tip: make sure you have some comfortable, sharp scissors to cut the cardstock with. My scissors weren’t comfortable to begin with, and my hand was hurting by the end. In any of your crafting, if your hand does start to hurt, TAKE A BREAK.  

Now for the fine folding and assembly. Fold all the pieces along each fold line. This was the only step I had a slight problem with – I couldn’t figure out whether to make one fold forwards or backwards. It was easily solved though – I just revisited the YouTube video, skipped through to the part I was stuck on, and found the answer within a few seconds. Assembly was very simple – the pieces are cleverly designed to slot together easily.

And wow… the result is amazing! It really was quick and easy to make. This is my finished hummingbird card:

I have never made a pop-up card or done kirigami before, and this pattern made the process really simple. I highly recommend Easy Cut Pop-Up card patterns if you want to make spectacular, unique cards for your friends and family (there is even an option to print your own message on the front of the card!), or display the finished cards as beautiful artwork.

In general, I’m not one for picking favourites, but ever since I was first introduced to Terry Pratchett’s books at age 11-ish, I have bought and loved every single one of his books. I even have two copies of some of them! In my student days, while I still lived in the UK, I queued for hours at book signings so I could spend a few seconds with the man himself, and he was unfailingly nice every time.

Since I made my sea turtle in March, I had a feeling it reminded me of something… Then it came to me: most of Terry’s books are set on the Discworld: a flat world carried through space on the backs of four elephants who themselves stand on the shell of the giant star turtle, Great A’tuin… (Google image search if you don’t know what I’m talking about 🙂 )

The idea to make a crocheted Discworld has been running around inside my head ever since. I thought it would make a wonderful art piece, so I’ve been slowly designing and assembling the pieces to create my Discworld model. I made sure the size for my small elephant design would fit on the turtle’s back… I spent hours studying, sketching, simplifying and photoshopping the Discworld Mapp so I could recreate it in cotton yarn (and my process for that would take up a whole post by itself)…

And, finally, today it has all come together with the finishing touches to the fourth elephant. Drumroll please… In honour of the genius of Terry Pratchett and his books (and totally unauthorized, so I hope he won’t take offence), allow me to present the Amigurumi Discworld:

Small print: Discworld is © Terry Pratchett. I have made my homage only for fun, not profit. I don’t have the rights to create a crochet pattern based on the Discworld, so please don’t ask me to do so 🙂

Please leave me a comment if you like my work – your words mean a lot to me!

UPDATED 5 Sep 08: I have just posted a Discworld update. Terry himself has seen the pics and commented! And I have added some details on how I made the Disc.

…or at least, I’m going to be. The brochure for the Fall Creativ Festival in Toronto just arrived:

And let’s have a look at page 42. See anything familiar?

That’s right – I’ll be teaching a crochet class to make my PocketAmi Mouse and Bunny! Unfortunately for my marketing, the keyword PlanetJune is missing from my blurb (how did that happen?!), but luckily my name isn’t very common so I hope people reading the brochure will google me if they want to know more about me.

For anyone who might be in the area, the show runs October 17-19th 2008, so make a note in your diary to keep the weekend free – it’s going to be a great show! For more info on the show, see the Creativ Festival website.

My class is on Saturday 18th from 11am to 12.30pm, and I’ll be at the A Needle Pulling Thread booth all day on Saturday when I’m not teaching, so please remember to stop by and say hello to me. (I’ll be easy to spot: I’ll be the one surrounded by crocheted animals!)