2016 was a year of amazing travel experiences for me. Within two months, we had two completely different and equally wondrous wildlife experiences on literally opposite sides of the world, and I wanted to commemorate our adventures, so I chose one of my favourite photos from each trip, and had them professionally printed onto canvas.

A baby zebra travelling in a family herd at the Kruger Park, South Africa, and a green sea turtle emerging from the breakers on Oahu, Hawaii.

As it proved very difficult to capture good photos of the canvases, here are my source photos so you can imagine how great the canvases look in person, hanging on my walls. Click to enlarge:

I’ve never done anything like this before, and I had no idea how they’d turn out, but my canvases look like professional photo artwork!

Every time I look around my living room, I’m reminded of the natural wonders we’ve seen, and it’s even more special knowing that it’s my own photography on display.

Having canvases printed with photos of your treasured memories creates unique, personalised home décor. It’s much more interesting than just hanging a framed photo, and you can get huge canvases that make a real impact on the wall.

If you’d like to get special photo memories printed onto canvas, many photographic shops now offer this service, so you can probably find a shop that’s local to you. The prices seem to be fairly reasonable, especially if you look out for special offers. (Make sure you get the protective UV-resistant coating – sometimes this may cost extra – so your canvases don’t fade.)

My canvases are A2 size (roughly 42cm x 60cm; 16inches x 23inches), which I thought would be huge, but my walls are large and empty and I sometimes wish I’d had them printed at twice the size. Big and bold is the way to go. I’ll know for next time – and I’m sure there will be a next time…

I can hardly believe it, but today marks the 10th anniversary of the day I self-published my first crochet pattern, Fuzzy Bear – and the day a new career path began to open up to me. After two years of running PlanetJune as a side-business, I quit my day job and struck out into the unknown, without knowing if it was even possible to support myself through crochet design alone.

Happily, 10 years, 2 books, and over 150 self-published patterns later, I’ve proven that it is possible to make a real living doing what I love, thanks to a measure of luck and a lot of hard work. And, best yet, I’m still excited by the idea of coming up with new designs and new techniques and sharing my love of crochet and nature with the world.

It’s also my sweet Maui’s 13th birthday today! Here are the birthday boys one year ago today, on their 12th and 9th birthdays.

I asked my customers to join the celebration by sending me a photo of their favourite things they’ve made from a PlanetJune pattern, and most responses said it was too hard to pick just one (thank you!), but here’s a small selection from those who managed to make a choice…

From the PJ ravelry group (clockwise from top left):

• jukatca: [Aardvark, Armadillo and Camel are] my all-time favorites. They all have really cute faces, great shaping, and no color changes!
• Pyroteca: I think my favorite will always be the fuzzy patterns – they are just so cute and innovative as there was (and still is) nothing out there like them. Let alone the fact that the patterns are so well written and can let someone on their first or second try at amigurumi produce something that looks amazing.
• petrOlly: I think my favourite pattern is the plumeria flower. I love the magic in this pattern – the last few stitches give you the perfect plumeria, and the pattern always works.
• Fatals-Attraction: I will chose a favourite project, my Discworld, which I gave to my mother-in-law (it is now her favourite!)

And from Facebook and my newsletter subscribers (clockwise from left):

• Peggy A:Your baby sea turtles on my blanket. The turtles have abalone buttons sewed to their undersides so you can change the placement and remove them for washing the blanket.
• Anna B: My favourite patterns by far are the AmiCats.
• Erica A: Very hard to pick a favourite, but frogs are my favourite animal, so frog it is. Just like the cats, I loved the clever shaping on this pattern.
• Belinda Y: I love my low maintenance succulent garden! I collect real succulents and cacti too, so your patterns really caught my eye.

Thank you to everyone who sent me their photos – I’ve really enjoyed seeing them all over the past couple of weeks, and hearing which PlanetJune patterns mean the most to you! It was especially heartening to hear from those who learnt to crochet (through my books and tutorials) just so they could make one of my designs.

It’s a real privilege to have the opportunity, through PlanetJune, to add a little more joy to the world through my creations, to help you to crochet your own special pieces from my patterns, and to raise a little more awareness and appreciation of our precious natural world.

Thank you for being here with me! I hope PlanetJune has made a positive difference in your life, however small, and will continue to do so as I head into my second decade of crochet design. ❤

My first design for the year is the Heart Cactus Collection, a sweet addition to my popular Cactus and Succulent Collections, with two new types of heart-shaped cacti in a lovely rounded pot, together with matching 3-dimensional hearts in two sizes. Perfect for your Valentine, or to show someone you care at any time of year.

The heart cacti are scaled so you can mix-and-match them with all the previous Cactus and Succulent Collection patterns:

Spot the new additions? (Hint: look for the purple pots…)

• As well as making individual heart cacti, you can include a heart cactus in your next cactus or succulent garden!
• You can also use this new pot with any of the other cacti and succulent plants, or the pots from the other patterns with the heart cacti.

About the Pattern

This pattern includes two styles of heart-shaped cactus: one short and wide with flowers, and one tall and multi-segmented.

Feel free to use the included cactus flower and bud instructions to make your own original cacti by choosing the number and position of flowers and buds; adding flowers and/or buds to the tall cactus, or omitting them from the short cactus.

As well as the truncated hearts that form the heart cacti, this pattern also includes free bonus instructions to complete the tip of the heart shapes, so you can make sweet 3-D hearts in two sizes.

Links to Buy & Launch Discount

Although I always offer discounts for shopping directly from PlanetJune, to spread the love even further, I’m offering an additional 10% discount for this week only. Just enter code LOVE at checkout by Sunday, 22nd January 2017, and the extra discount will be applied.

Buy the Heart Cactus Collection pattern here in my shop. Or, if you’re not ready to buy just yet, please heart or queue it on Ravelry so you don’t forget about it:

If you’re making hearts and/or heart-shaped cacti from these patterns, please join us for the Hearts & Flowers crochet-along in the PlanetJune Ravelry group, between now and Valentine’s Day, and share photos of what you’re making – I’d love to see!

PlanetJune Commissions has been revamped to be easier, faster and more fun. The basic premise hasn’t changed – you can help to choose and crowdfund new PlanetJune crochet pattern designs by ‘voting’ with your commission pledge!

But I’ve reworked the mechanisms to make it more fun for you from now on, and so you won’t be stuck with pledges you made forever ago.

A Little Background…

It’s coming up for 5 years since I first launched my crowdfunded commissions system as a barometer of public opinion on which potential animal designs may be most popular. Every animal on the commissions list is one I feel confident I’d be able to design, and happy to do so if enough people show an interest. I don’t have time to design them all, and using the commissions system as a gauge to which may be popular is a useful method to decide between multiple designs I’d be equally happy to create.

After a few hurdles (I set the prices far too low, so too many designs were being pledged for me to keep up with!), I temporarily withdrew the commissions system while I completed all the fully-pledged designs and worked on upgrading the system to make it more sustainable.

Thanks to my supporters, I’ve now completed 17 crowdsourced commissioned designs – and I’m ready to start on the 18th! Which animal will it be..?

How It Works

Commissions are now linked to your PlanetJune account. Once you’ve logged in, you’ll find the new commissions options in ‘My Account’, and from there you can make pledges, view your existing pledges, and upgrade, downgrade or delete your pledges.

Now you can pledge any full dollar amount (although there’s still a $6 minimum) so you can pledge $7, or $10, or $25 – or whatever you want!

Your pledge indicates your intention to pay that amount towards the commission of the design in question, should that design become fully-funded. But, your pledge will only become locked-in at such time as the design is a) fully pledged and b) at the top of the queue.

This means you won’t be stuck with a pledge you made months or years ago – you can log into your PlanetJune account and change or delete any unlocked pledges at any time until the next commission is ready to begin (at which time all pledges towards the next fully-pledged design will be locked).

This gives you the freedom to pledge as much as you like towards as many designs as you like. At most, you’ll be committing to one of your pledges, as only the first fully-funded design will get locked and made. Even if there are other fully-funded commissions, no further pledges will be locked-in until I’ve completed the previous design, published the pattern, and announced the date of the next commissions slot – you can still delete those pledges if you change your mind.

So you’re only ever committed to your pledge for the current commission. Let’s say you want to pay $30 for any one of 3 designs (but not for all of them!), you can pledge $30 towards each of them in the hope that one will grab the next commission slot. Once that happens, you’re free to delete your remaining pledges if you want, so you won’t get a surprise $30 invoice several months (or even years) later.

In this way, we can have a ‘bidding war’ every time I have a commission slot available. I’ll announce the slot via the Commissions newsletter, you make your best pledge for all the designs you’d like to commission, and whichever hits the jackpot first will become my next commissioned pattern!

Then, after the bidding war is over, you’ll have at least a month to decide if you’re still happy to honour all your other pledges, as no other design will be locked-in until I’ve completed the current pattern and announced the date of the next commission slot. Edit or delete your pledges from your PlanetJune account as often as you want – it’s all automatic.

Design Options

To give you a better idea of what I plan to design with each option, I’ve added a representative photo of each of the animals, either from my own photos, or licenced through Creative Commons.

The photos above are just a sample – you can see them all on the Design Options page on the new Commissions microsite.

Note: I had planned to add some new options to the commissions list at this relaunch time, but the list is plenty long enough already, so I’m keeping the options as-is for the time being. Once we’re well into the first cycle, I’ll get rid of some of the least popular choices and replace them with new requests. So please:

Stay Updated

I highly recommend you sign up for my Commissions News mailing list to be notified whenever new design options are added. I’ll also be emailing the list with a reminder a couple of weeks before I open each new commissions slot, so you’ll have an extra chance to check all your pledges and delete any you’re unhappy with – or add some new ones – before the next commission gets locked in.

Pledge Now for the February Timeslot!

Make your best pledges right now for the animals you’d most like me to design. At the time I write this, Goat is in the lead, with Raccoon and Capybara coming up fast and a whole host of others closing in – but that could all change in an instant… Make your best pledges now for your favourites, and maybe your design will be the one I start in the next month!

Ready to pledge? Login to your PlanetJune account – you’ll see the Commissions options (to make/edit your pledges) in ‘My Account’.

Or check out the design options and FAQ on the Commissions microsite.

I hope the new and improved PlanetJune Commissions will lead to lots more lovely animal designs to add to my portfolio – I’m looking forward to seeing which I’ll get to make first!

It’s easy when you’re immersed in a business every day to jump straight into the next thing, keep tightly focused on the next task, and not really see how far you’ve come. This Year in Review post is the one time I actually stop and think about what I’ve accomplished over the past year…

In 2016, I released 14 new crochet patterns, adding a varied mix of animals, plants, accessories, donationware and seasonal designs to my catalogue:

I haven’t had a lot of time for non-work crafting, but I have knitted another 1.5 sweaters (although I’ve just realised I haven’t even photographed/blogged my last 2015 sweater yet – oops!) and made a few other things, including my polymer clay BB-8 🙂

Personal Report

From May-August, I spent 1-2 weeks of each month travelling (to the UK, Hawaii, a Kruger safari, and Canada), which was far too much, but I either take the opportunity to travel with Dave when he has observing trips and conferences, or we miss out on the chance of a short holiday at an exciting location for little more than the cost of my plane tickets.

But, especially as we decided (for safety reasons) to not announce when we weren’t going to be home, that put a lot of business stress on me. How can I stay active on my blog and social media when all I’m doing is visiting places I can’t mention or struggling to catch up and get the next pattern ready before the next trip?

It was exhausting, and it took its toll with another 2-month bronchitis episode, which forced a lapse in my knee rehab exercises, so now I have knee problems again… I know I did too much, and I’ve learnt my lesson.

But, although I’d like to travel less frequently in future, I don’t regret my choices: we had some spectacular travel adventures with memories I’ll always treasure, I got over the bronchitis, and I know I can get my knee back to its still-wobbly-but-not-painful best in time. And I have an amazing amount of new wildlife inspiration:

Clockwise from top left: I photographed a UK robin, Hawaiian turtle, Canadian chipmunk, and African elephant – all in one year!

Business Report

My most popular patterns in 2016 were my turtles, cacti/succulents, and AmiCats (all pictured below), followed by the new 2016 releases.

It’s always the case that a few bestselling patterns make up the majority of my sales, but the size and variety of my catalogue as a whole is equally important – looking at my sales statistics, I can see that I wouldn’t be able to make a good living from my patterns without having both a) a handful of very popular designs and b) many dozens of other choices.

For the past five years, I’ve kept an annual list of large project goals for PlanetJune, to complete as time permits. In 2016, I completed the last of these large behind-the-scenes projects to improve the running of my business:

• Upgrading and relaunching my shop with new features
• Splitting my FAQ into its own microsite with each answer on its own page
• Adding closed captioning to all my YouTube video tutorials
• Relaunching my newsletter with a new branded look and better anti-spam protection
• Developing and coding an improved pattern commissions system (to be relaunched later this month – watch this space!)

What’s Next?

It’s exciting to have completed all my big projects – I usually spend a large fraction of each year working behind the scenes on tech updates and improvements. But patterns and tutorials are big projects in themselves, and there’ll always be new tech/security updates to implement, so I’m happy to start 2017 without any additional goals. If I leave myself with more time to play around with new design concepts, who knows what I’ll come up with..?

My wish for 2017 is for creative freedom, light-heartedness, and time to relax. I think PlanetJune will benefit from that too, and I hope you’ll also be able to find those things in the year ahead. Happy New Year!

If you’re a long-time reader, you may remember the R2-D2 sculpture I completed in 2009. Ever since I saw The Force Awakens, I’ve been wanting to make my R2 a little BB-8 buddy. I bought the polymer clay in May (it turns out FIMO Soft is available in the perfect orange colour – very convenient), and I’ve been waiting to find some sculpting time ever since. And here’s the result:

This was not an easy project. It didn’t occur to me at first how much more difficult BB-8 would be to make than R2-D2. The detailing I did on R2 was incredibly small, and, as BB-8 is only two-thirds the size of R2, that means all the detail is even smaller.

And then there’s the real problem: circles. (Yes, this should have been obvious from the start…) BB-8 is a ball, where R2 is a cylinder, and all the details are based on circles, whereas R2’s are based on rectangles. Freehanding circles is hard. Freehanding rings is even harder. And then try shrinking all those rings down to fit on a ball that’s only 4cm (1.5″) tall..!

So yes, the circles aren’t perfect, and I had to leave out the finest level of detailing. But it’s part of the joy of a handsculpt that it’s clearly handmade – if I wanted exact perfection, I could have just bought a model BB-8 from a toy shop, but where’s the fun in that?

And now for your reward for reading this whole post: BB-8 and R2-D2 both have hidden magnets embedded within them that allow their heads to rotate! Just watch this:

See my R2-D2 post to see how I achieved this!

It’s such a pleasure to make things just for the fun and challenge of the making. R2-D2 is very pleased with his little brother, and so am I 🙂

I’ve started a new hobby: setting up themed photos that cram in lots of my crochet designs for my Instagram account. It takes a while to set them up, but I’m really enjoying the results! Here’s my latest one, featuring over a dozen of my Christmas designs:

A plethora of seasonal PlanetJune designs – find all the patterns here

I’m planning to make more of these crochet scenes next year – follow me on Instagram (@PlanetJune) if you’d like to see them 🙂

And, if you’re crocheting Christmas decorations or presents, please join the Christmas CAL in the PlanetJune Ravelry group and share what you’re making from my seasonal patterns (or any other PJ patterns as Christmas gifts).

Review and Win contest

You’re automatically entered in the next monthly draw every time you write a review for a PlanetJune pattern you’ve enjoyed – and you’ll also be helping future customers make an informed decision about patterns they are considering buying.

October’s winning review is Holly M‘s review of my Koala pattern:

I chose this pattern for a group project in which my office-mates and I all made a bunch of koalas and attached them to the trees at our workplace. I wanted it to be closer to koala size, so I used this exact pattern, but used a heavier yarn and bigger crochet needle, and it still turned out perfect and adorable! Everyone loved that the arms were poseable. A great, easy pattern to follow, and a true joy to make!

And November’s winning review is Heidi W‘s review of my Guinea Fowl pattern:

Although this looked difficult to make it was very well explained by June’s pattern instructions. I absolutely loved the body and neck technique and the finished product looks exactly like her photos! I will definitely be purchasing more patterns from June.

Congratulations, Holly and Heidi – I’ve emailed you both to find out which pattern you’d each like as your prize!

What’s next?

In preparation for my 11th year in business(!) I’m planning some changes for next year. I’m trying to cut out any tasks that are neither important nor enjoyable, to leave me with more time to concentrate on the important and fun parts of my business, and to have more time away from work.

As part of that plan, this will be the last of these ‘monthly update’ posts (I don’t think many people read them, and I can probably spend the time more usefully):

• Any news that’s blogworthy will get its own post, and I’ll save the smaller updates for social media
• For CAL news, follow me on Facebook or join the PlanetJune Ravelry group
• You can see the winners of the monthly Review & Win contest (which is continuing!) on the Review & Win page

I’ll be sharing more about my future plans in my Year in Review post – I think they’ll make a positive difference in my life and in the operations of PlanetJune 🙂

If you haven’t picked up my new Gingerbread Family patterns, you may not know that there are also instructions in there for making a Gingy character (based on the Gingerbread Man from Shrek)…

I made a super-sized Gingy, at over 8″ (21cm) tall, but, of course, you can also make a regular-sized Gingy using my pattern, or a super-sized regular gingerbread man – I just chose to demonstrate two options at once.

Gingy Embellishments

I took the opportunity to demonstrate how versatile the Gingerbread Man pattern is by decorating my super-sized sample as Gingy – you really can decorate your gingerbread men/girls however you wish, just like you do with real gingerbread!

I chose to leave off Gingy’s ‘broken leg’ icing, because I wanted to keep all the embellishments crocheted so you can clearly see how upsizing my regular-sized gingerbread men will look with no other changes. But if you embroidered the embellishments on your gingerbread man instead, you could make much finer lines than with crocheted chains, and add as much detail as you like.

(You can find the full details for the ‘Gingy’ embellishments I made on p9 of the Gingerbread Man pattern.)

Upsizing

I worked the extra-large gingerbread man by holding two strands of yarn together, with a larger hook. (See my Resizing Amigurumi article for my advice on choosing an appropriate hook size when you double your yarn.) This means you can make the embellishments using one strand of the same yarn (and a smaller hook) instead of the embroidery floss embellishments I used for the standard gingerbread men.

A New Yarn Experiment…

Making these amigurumi gave me the opportunity to take some measurements, so now I have a much better estimate of how much additional yarn you’ll need if you hold two strands together. I already knew you’ll need more than just the obvious twice as much (2 strands means 2x yarn length), because each stitch is also larger, so uses more yarn, but how much more?

So, by doubling the yarn and using a correspondingly larger hook, the finished piece was 44% larger, and took 2.7x more yarn – useful to know!

Although this won’t be an exact formula, because it depends on how tightly you crochet at each size, and how big your larger hook is compared with your smaller hook, it gives a good rule-of-thumb indication for yarn quantity when you scale up by doubling the yarn.

(I’ve added this new info to my Resizing Amigurumi article so you can refer back if/when you need it.)

If you’re making Gingerbread Men (or Girls) from my patterns, I’d love to see them! Please join the Christmas crochet-along in the PlanetJune Ravelry group, or post them on social media (and tag @PlanetJune so I can see your post).