PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

When I was little, I always wanted a Netherland Dwarf rabbit. We ended up with guinea pigs instead, which I never regretted, but I still have a soft spot for cute little dwarf bunnies. Well, now I have the opportunity to do something about that:

This bunny started out as a failed attempt to make my abyssinian guinea pig. I realised when I got halfway through that it wasn’t going to work as a guinea pig, so I decided to keep it and see if I could modify it into a bunny for myself.

If you’d like to make one of your own, it’s based on the one-colour Fuzzy Guinea Pig pattern, made in eyelash yarn (by itself; not held together with ww yarn) and a size H (5mm) hook. Before starting the decreases on the body, add a few extra rounds until the bunny looks long enough – just eyeball it. I left off the legs because I figured the fur was long enough to hide them anyway, but you could include the legs if you’d prefer.

For the ears, I used the following pattern:
Rnd 1: Ch2, 6 sc in 2nd ch from hook. (6 st)
Rnd 2: (2 sc in next st, sc in next 2 st) twice. (8 st)
Rnd 3: sc in each st around. (8 st)
Rnd 4: (2 sc in next st, sc in next 3 st) twice. (10 st)
Rnds 5-9: sc in each st around. (10 st)
Join with sl st to next st, fasten off leaving long end of yarn to attach ear to head.

Flatten the ears and sew them to the head. Trim down all the fur around the face and ears. Sew on 10mm eyes and embroider the nose.

My guinea pig has taken baby bunny under her wing:

Now I finally have the dwarf bunny I always wanted!

What a way to ring in the new year… Two days with much snow and no internet access wasn’t exactly what I’d expected! I’m back in action now and I’ve caught up with all the pattern orders, but I’ve still got some e-mail to sort through. To make up for my poor pictureless post yesterday, here’s a rare glimpse of PlanetJune-land:

See, I wasn’t kidding about the snow – those piles in front of the houses are probably over a metre high!

Now back to the crafts… My other blog, the Crochet Along group blog, has just started its new theme: Granny Squares. So if you’ve ever wondered how to make one, or you’d like to see what we’re making over there, head on over!

I made my first ever granny square so I could design the blog banner:

It was quick and easy to make – I’m looking forward to thinking of something to make with these squares soon. Something small though – there’s no way I’m going to have time to make a whole blanket!

I’ve enjoyed reading the crafty New Year’s resolutions on everyone’s blogs, but I’m not even going to attempt to make one of my own. I have no idea where 2008 will take me, so I’ll just continue to enjoy what I’m doing, and try new things, and see where I end up 🙂

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

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

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

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

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

We’ve had friends visiting and they brought their PS3 and Rock Band game – so much fun! The game is played with a guitar, drums and a microphone – but the noise of the drumsticks hitting the drums is LOUD, so you have to play at high volume to hear the song over your drumming.

We needed a quick solution for this (didn’t want to use up valuable game time), so I wrapped the tips of the drumsticks with multiple layers of batting and used some stretch denim from my stash to sew a quick sleeve to cover each tip. Then we just tied the sleeves onto the sticks by wrapping household string around the bottom of the sleeves very tightly. They worked really well to muffle the sound of the sticks hitting the drums without impeding the gameplay. And they look kind of cool too.

For any other Rock Band owners, the other way to modify it (this takes longer and requires specific supplies) would be to add foam padding to the drum pads – I just did some googling and found a run-down of mods others have tried. Or just buy some rubber-tipped drumsticks 🙂

I’ve been busy today, baking tray after tray of sugar and spice cookies:

They were intended as gifts, but bad weather changed our plans, and now we’ll be eating dozens of delicious cookies ourselves! What a hardship 😉

Cookie, anyone? Help yourself…

Happy Christmas to all my readers! I hope your holidays are happy and restful.

Getting the face of your amigurumi just right is a very important step – they need that cute expression! I get a lot of questions about what to use for the eyes and noses. I’ve compiled a run-down of some options you can try.

My box of ami eyes and noses (yes, it used to be a Jelly Belly box!)

This article is linked below and also from my new page Amigurumi Help on the sidebar – my new one-stop shop for amigurumi tutorials.

>> Continue to the Eyes and Noses article

I was out looking for some new origami papers last night, when I saw a pack of paper strips for making Lucky Stars. I’ve always wanted to know how to make them, and I thought I couldn’t go far wrong for under a dollar.

They are actually really easy to fold – if you want to make your own, the hardest part would be to cut the strips of paper (although even that wouldn’t be much hardship with a paper cutter/guillotine).

Each 25 x 1cm strip made one 1.5cm star. I strung them into a garland with seed beads as spacers. The finished result (sorry about the backlighting) makes a really cute window decoration:

Click for larger image

They would also make a nice tree garland! If you want to make some yourself, here are some instructions, and a video that shows how easy it is to make one.

PS – While I was out, I couldn’t resist picking up this pen pot featuring Elephant and his ‘Favorite’ upside-down monkey friend, who apparently like bananas very much. You can’t argue with random cuteness like that 🙂

Okay, I’m officially hooked on modular origami. Making the multiple units and then slotting them all together is really relaxing. I made this stellated icosahedron (thanks to Alice (futuregirl) for the idea) from 5 different patterns of origami paper.

I found this Youtube video showing how to make the Sonobe module. 30 modules later, plus some coaxing to fit them all together, and this is the result:

There was almost a disaster this morning as my cat decided it was a new toy for him and got hold of it before I had a chance to photograph it! Luckily the modules weren’t damaged, they had just pulled apart, so I just had to reassemble most of it before taking this shot.

Does anyone know of any other interesting modular origami shapes/tutorials I can try? Let me know in the comments!