Writing this review post each year gives me perspective on my year in business – and life – and helps me to appreciate my accomplishments. My main goal for 2015 was to get healthy so I can enjoy life, nature, and creating new designs. At the time I wrote that I had no idea that I’d be getting serious knee surgery in February and be spending the majority of the year working on rehabilitating my knee and getting my strength back – still a work in progress – so ‘getting healthy’ was a much more difficult and time-consuming goal than I’d imagined it would be!

Although this meant I haven’t exactly been prolific, I’m very happy with the range and quality of my new crochet designs: the AmiCats (of course!), 5 new commissioned animal patterns, a new baby animal set, a donationware pattern, an expansion pack, two shawls, and an innovative Christmas design:

PlanetJune 2015 crochet patterns

(Wow, seeing them all together like this, I must have subconsciously followed a strong colour palette with my designs this year – isn’t that interesting to see?!)

I didn’t waste my time while I was stuck on the sofa resting my knee; it turns out that knitting is a great distraction from pain, and my wardrobe has benefitted from 4 new sweaters (the final one isn’t photographed yet – I can’t face the thought of modelling alpaca in summer…):

(Most of) my 2015 knitting projects

And I made quite a few other craft projects, in punchneedle embroidery, papercraft, cross stitch, and block printing:

My 2015 craft projects

Personal Report

‘Wasting’ the whole year convalescing has been extremely frustrating, but I like to look for the silver lining in any situation, and the fact that I’ve only been able to work part-time hours for the entire year and not only keep my business afloat but actually increase my sales proves that all the systems I’ve been building in previous years are working! My business, to an extent, runs itself, which leaves me with more time to do more interesting things.

In 2015, ‘more interesting things’ turned out to be going to knee rehab, being too exhausted to work, and dealing with ongoing criminal activity. Obviously, that’s not the ideal situation and didn’t leave much time or energy for new designs, tutorials, etc, but it proves that I can keep my business going without working myself into the ground. That means, once I don’t have as much other stuff to deal with, I really should have time to enjoy life and enjoy creating again!

No matter how much buffer time I build in, I still constantly fail to meet any deadline I set. But, you know what? That’s okay. I don’t need to set deadlines as motivation to get things done – completing a project and putting it out into the world is its own reward.

I’m finding that keeping my plans fluid and accepting that sometimes I’ll lose working time to factors beyond my control leads to a much less stressful life. Thankfully, my business can still function this way, and supports me well enough to give me the time I need to make things the way I want them to be made.

It’s still frustrating to be able to accomplish so much less than I want to, but I’ve realised that if there’s something you don’t like about your situation, you have a choice: find a way to change it, or accept it. I choose to accept it: it may mean less quantity of new work, but I’ll never ever sacrifice quality. I feel like this is a healthier mental outlook: it helps me to be at peace with my situation and concentrate on enjoying my successes.

Business Report

In 2014’s review, I said:

I’ve been working ridiculously hard on [building self-sustaining systems] for the past three years, to get the ever-expanding PlanetJune to the point where I can run the business instead of it running me. And, fingers crossed, I may now be at that point!

I think I can now call that a resounding success – as I said above, 2015 has actually been my most profitable year to date, by a significant margin, despite my only being able to work part-time hours. That’s an amazing feeling, and it owes a lot to the fact that I published my unique AmiCats designs in January. They have proven to be as popular as I’d hoped they would during the 3-year journey it took to bring them to reality.

(That’s the nature of a business like mine – you put in the work on faith and have to hope the financial rewards will eventually repay you! It’s taken me 9 years of constant pattern-designing and lots of system-building to reach this place of relative financial security – although, even now, there are no guarantees…)

This relative financial freedom has also allowed me to accomplish several big projects that haven’t contributed significantly to my income, but have contributed to improving the PlanetJune experience for my customers:

• I scrambled in the first half of the year when Google announced it would be penalising sites that aren’t mobile-friendly, and taught myself responsive web design so I could redesign my entire website.
• I figured out a mechanism to process my Etsy/ArtFire orders through PlanetJune, so all my customers get the same service, experience, and permanent access to their patterns, and repeat customers will be more likely to shop directly in future.
• I reacquired the rights to my out-of-print papercraft book, Paper Chains & Garlands, and edited and self-published it as an e-book.
• I finally closed down my old papercraft website, Folding Trees, and re-launched my best paper tutorials as PlanetJune Papercraft.
• I’ve upgraded my newsletter software and redesigned my monthly newsletter (first new issue coming later this month!) to look more professional and in line with my brand.

Constantly improving and streamlining operations is definitely paying off, and, with hindsight, I’m delighted that Google forced my hand into dropping everything and making PlanetJune mobile-friendly – that was definitely a blessing in disguise, as my website is now so much more functional and enjoyable to use.

What’s next?

My overall goal for 2016 is to live by David Allen‘s quote “You can do anything, but not everything”: to make the most of the time I have by choosing projects wisely, to not overwork, and to continue to strive for innovative, unique designs so I can be proud of what I accomplish – no matter how much (or little) that proves to be.

For the third year in a row, my personal goals are to enjoy life and nature and to get healthy. I now have a new knee specialist and my new rehab/exercise program seems to be making a real difference already, so I’m feeling positive that 2016 will be the year to finally realise those goals!

As for the business, I’ll follow the same plan as last year: leaving my goals flexible and seeing where life takes me. Broadly:

• I have one more big technical project to complete to bring PlanetJune fully up-to-date and easier to maintain, going forward.
• There’s also just one more commissioned design to complete, and then I plan to revise the commissions system to make it more stable and sustainable.
• And I aim to give myself time to explore and experiment with my craft so I can create exciting new crochet designs and technique tutorials.

My wish for 2016 is to have a peaceful, satisfying year, full of inspiration and creativity, with minimal stress and guilt. I hope 2016 will be positive and peaceful for you too. Thank you so much for your support on my continuing journey with PlanetJune, and I wish you a very Happy New Year!

I like to have a relaxing craft project to work on over the holidays, to give me a complete break from work and designing. In December 2011, I’d hoped to do some knitting, but you have to learn to keep plans flexible when you live in Africa: the knitting needles I ordered from my local shop in November didn’t arrive until the following March(!), so I had to change my plans. Instead, I returned to one of my oldest crafty pleasures: cross stitch.

Long before I taught myself to crochet, my crafts of choice were polymer clay, candlemaking, and counted cross-stitch. I used to buy cross stitch kits, and then, later, bought software that let me design my own charts. Now I know my way around Illustrator, I can design my own charts, from scratch – much more satisfying 🙂

I like the idea of 8-bit art – basing a design on pixelated video game graphics makes it so easy to replicate the original – but I wanted to give it my own twist. So, I came up with a Tetris design to stitch in 4 shades of green to mimic the original classic 2-bit black and white (actually light green and dark green – or ‘pea soup’ colours according to Wikipedia!) Game Boy version.

And here’s the result: 10,000 perfect little stitches of geeky relaxation.

To give this design a very small amount of meaning, the falling block has a little built-in life metaphor: do you take the easy road by dropping the block straight down and completing two lines, or do you hold out for the big rewards by shifting it one space to the left first, and hoping a straight piece comes along soon so you can complete a tetris? (I’d hold out for the tetris every time!)

The original Game Boy Tetris is still the best version of the game (although I may be biased – it was my only game for months, until I could afford to buy Super Mario Land too – and I’ve probably logged hundreds of hours of gameplay on it). I have a Tetris game for my DS, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the classic music and Russian dancing men from the original.

I considered making a companion piece showing the full band and all the dancing men, but that would need the full height of the Game Boy screen (144 pixels) – almost half as many stitches again as the first piece! I decided that’d be too much work, but, when the holidays next rolled around, guess what I started designing..?

Can you hear the music?

I’d figured out how to draw symbol-coded cross-stitch charts in Illustrator and charted each piece fully before I started to work on it:

Doesn’t my chart look great? I’d hoped to eventually release both patterns as Donationware, but the issues of trademark infringement and unlicensed patterns made that idea too difficult to pursue further, so I guess my charts will never see the light of day. But at least I know how to create perfect professional-quality cross stitch charts now – you never know when that’ll come in handy!

This turned into a really long-term project. During my second Christmas of working on the second piece, I posted this wip photo (rotated so as not to give the game away):

I was still working on it last Christmas, and it’s taken until now to complete, wash, press and mount both pieces.

The back of the second piece – I love how the back of cross stitch embroideries look almost as good as the front, and have their own patterns that you don’t see from the front.

And finally, 4 years of holiday crafting and 24,800 stitches after I embarked on this project, they’re ready to hang in my office/studio! It took a lot of patience to reach this point, but I think it was worth it:

They’re a perfect fit for the narrow wall space to the right of the window. The only question left is which should hang above the other: like this…

…or like this…

I really can’t decide! Which do you prefer?

Either way, I love them. And now I’ll get to see my Tetris wall hangings every day, and have a moment of happy nostalgia every time I look at them. 🙂

I’ve started an ongoing long term craft project to make a group of different butterflies using Punchneedle embroidery – all different colours and shapes but all based on my interpretation of real species – and mount each one individually on a wall so they all ‘fly’ together in a colourful cloud.

It took me the best part of a year to sketch up the design for my next Punchneedle butterfly, and only a few pleasurable hours to transfer my design, punch it, wire the wings, back it with felt, and trim it… You may have seen my in-progress shot a couple of weeks ago on Twitter:

Rajah Brooke’s Birdwing is the national butterfly of Malaysia, and all our attempts to spot one during our trip to Borneo last year were in vain. I decided to make up for that disappointment by creating my own in punchneedle – the bold electric green on black makes for a spectacular design…

Each of my punchneedle butterflies is designed to fit inside a 6″ embroidery hoop, so my collection is definitely not to scale. While my Peacock and Sea Green Swallowtail are both much larger than their real-life counterparts, birdwing butterflies are huge, and my ‘Brooke Butterfly’ (as they called it in Borneo) is actually just about life-sized!

This brings my little collection to three, and I think my butterflies are almost ready to leave the safety of my shelves and migrate to their eventual wall display. I’ll probably get started on that when I’ve completed one more design…

This is a very long-term project for me, but I’m so enjoying seeing my small collection slowly grow with each new butterfly. I think I’ll try to make a Monarch next, although it’ll be fiddly to make: punchneedle is best suited for bold shapes, not fine lines. But the Monarch is my favourite butterfly from my time in Canada, so it wouldn’t feel right to omit it just because it’ll be a challenge.

While it’s a shame that my punchneedle patterns don’t really sell well enough to justify making any more, there’s a silver lining to that too: it gives me the freedom to call this project pure art, with no constraints for making the butterfly designs easy to replicate by others. If that changes at some point in the future, I’d publish all my butterfly patterns as an ebook and grade the designs by difficulty, so it’s still not a bad idea to make my Monarch. And, if not, I’m enjoying making my butterfly collection, and I hope you’re enjoying seeing them!

If this post has piqued your interest in Punchneedle embroidery, take a look at my Punchneedle intro page for information on this craft and how to get started.

In celebration of my new PlanetJune Papercraft ebook and donationware tutorials, I decided to design a papercraft poinsettia to add to my collection…

The ‘petals’ of this Poinsettia are made with origami techniques, and the ‘flower’ is assembled with wire (with an option for sewing thread) – that can also be used to create a stem or hanging loop – and beads for the centre.

Did you know that the red ‘petals’ of a poinsettia are actually bracts – modified leaves – and only the central yellow parts are the flowers? So, while this isn’t actually a ‘flower’ in the case of a poinsettia, you can also make this design as a pretty flower at any time of year!

If you don’t have origami paper, inexpensive gift wrapping paper is the perfect thickness for paper folding. You only need to cut 3 squares to make a flower, and you’re bound to have some leftover wrapping paper before Christmas, so don’t throw it away! My origami poinsettia measures 3″ (7.5cm) in diameter, but it can be easily scaled to any size by starting with larger or smaller squares of paper. Beads or a button add the finishing touch to this lovely easy decoration.

The origami techniques in this design are very simple – this would be a fun introduction to paper folding if you haven’t tried it before – and once you’ve learnt how to fold a leaf you’ll be able to whip up a poinsettia (or several!) very quickly. If you’d like to give it a go, the link to the free tutorial is below, and, as always, if you choose to thank me with a donation, you’ll get the handy printable PDF version 🙂

Go to the Origami Poinsettia tutorial >>

The Poinsettia Collection

I only had one year off before I felt compelled to return to my tradition of crafting a new Poinsettia ornament every year. This new design brings the total up to 9! Here are all the previous PlanetJune Poinsettias:

Top (L-R): 2006 kanzashi poinsettia (no tutorial); 2007 crocheted poinsettia
2nd Row (L-R): 2008 polymer clay poinsettia; 2009 punchneedle poinsettia
3rd Row (L-R): 2010 felt poinsettia; 2011 beaded poinsettia
Bottom Row: 2012 thread crochet poinsettia; 2013 knitted poinsettia

(You can find all my Poinsettia designs as PDFs in my shop, or use the links above for the free online versions.)

Happy seasonal crafting!

This is sweater #8 of my ‘learn to knit by making a dozen self-designed sweaters’ project. (Here are links to #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6 and #7, if you’d like to see my progress.)

After the fine yarn and lace of my last cardigan, I wanted a more relaxing knit for my next project. I decided to go for a really basic V-neck pullover, not too fitted so I can wear layers and long-sleeves underneath when it’s cold, but with some shaping so it fits over my hips but isn’t too boxy.

Even though the end result is simple – plain stockinette throughout with 2×2 rib for the collar, hem and cuffs – I still got to try some new techniques and expand my skills. I’d just bought Sally Melville’s Craftsy class ‘Essential Techniques Every Knitter Should Know‘ (and, as an aside, I loved this class – highly recommended, particularly if you’re interested in knitting sweaters).

Some of Sally’s recommendations made me feel less like I’m muddling through my knitting journey, as I’d reached the same conclusions as her (so I must be doing something right!), while other tips were new to me, and I tried a few in this sweater.

(In fact, Sally’s thinking on knitwear design decisions seems like such a good match for mine that I’ve since also bought her book, Knitting Pattern Essentials: Adapting and Drafting Knitting Patterns for Great Knitwear – I can recommend that too!)

My new techniques with this sweater:

• I used lifted increases for the first time, on Sally’s recommendation, and tried her shortcut for simplifying them. Thumbs up to that.
• I also tried her technique for faster mattress stitch seaming (although I love seaming my knits – it’s like magic! – so I’ll probably stick with my usual slower method, going through every row, in most cases).
• I refined the cuffs and hem I used for my shawl-collar pullover by switching to smaller needles to reduce the bulk. Definitely an improvement.
• I did my first pick-up-and-knit for the neckband (I usually knit it as a strip then sew it on) and that worked fine – I even managed a sort of mitered corner at the point of the V.
• And I decided to weave in the ends as I finished each part of the sweater. Although that’s a bit scary because you have to trust you won’t want to change anything later, it worked well for a simple sweater like this, and made the finishing process at the end much easier!

I feel like this one came together in no time (making it in worsted weight yarn didn’t hurt) and the finished sweater is warm, cosy, and snuggly – just what I was hoping for.

Of course, it’s now summer in South Africa, and far too hot to be wearing something like this! So please excuse me if I look less than comfortable in these photos (especially the one above – the sun came out and I was roasting!) but I’ll be very happy to wear this properly once the weather cools down again here – my house is freezing in winter and this will be just what I need to keep warm.

The confidence I got from making this simple design quickly and well made me think I was ready to take a bit of a leap for my next design and try something completely different. It’s not finished yet, but I’ll show you how that turned out, soon…

I can hardly believe I’m two-thirds through this project now! I’ve knitted 8 wearable sweaters for myself in just over 3 years – when I started, I didn’t seriously think I’d ever get this far – and I’m enjoying every minute of this learning experience.

It’s hard to come up with a new Christmas design – with thousands of patterns to compete with, it’s not easy to think of something original that hasn’t been done before, but I’m confident that my Snow Stars are a completely new concept!

This pattern collection is really three patterns in one:

• An amazing one-piece, no-sew, seamless amigurumi star
• Three quick and easy crocheted snowflakes
• A set of beautiful Christmas decorations

The Star

I’ve spent the last couple of years playing around with prototypes for a one-piece crocheted star that’s smooth and lovely all over, with no sewing at all required, and I finally figured it out. It’s truly magical how it comes together; while you crochet it looks like it’ll never work, but as you start to add the stuffing it magically turns into a plump adorable star before your eyes. And all with little more than single crochet stitches! I hope you’ll be as excited to try this technique as I am to have invented it.

(And, as a bonus, my star also makes a lovely seamless one-piece baby toy. Embroider features to make it truly baby-safe, or, for a child past teething age, you can insert standard animal eyes before you stuff and close the star.)

The Snowflakes

With the star design complete, I’ve spent the last few weeks crocheting endless snowflakes, tweaking my designs until I developed a set of three that met all my criteria:

• Pretty and well-balanced designs
• All completely different but complementary
• Sized to fit perfectly on the star when made with the same yarn
• Not too chunky, even in worsted weight yarn

I’m really happy with the results! And, as the snowflakes are small even with heavy yarn, when you size them down with crochet cotton and a small hook, you end up with most adorably tiny snowflakes! (My thread samples pictured above are just over 2″ diameter with size 10 thread and a B US/2.25mm hook) – and you could go even smaller if your hands don’t mind tiny hooks.)

These perfectly formed beauties only take minutes to complete, and would be perfect as gift-toppers, to accent your Christmas place-settings, or anywhere else a tiny wintery decoration is needed – and the pattern includes stiffening instructions so your flakes won’t droop.

The Snow Stars

Put it all together, and you have a dazzling and completely original tree ornament. All the snowflakes fit perfectly on the star, and the star forms a colourful backdrop to each snowflake. Make your stars in any colour to match your Christmas decor, then add your favourite snowflake design! Instructions for adding a hanging loop are included in the pattern, so you can easily add your Snow Stars to your tree or to a garland.

The Pattern

Snow Star Ornaments is a detailed 10-page pattern. In addition to the written crochet pattern instructions, it includes right- and left-handed stitch diagrams for all three snowflakes, and lots of photo tutorials (for the special stitch used, stuffing and assembling the star and ornaments, stiffening the snowflakes, and adding an optional hanging loop).

But I’ve also laid it out to be print friendly: if you’d like to print it out, you can save paper and ink by printing just 3 pages:

1. The star crochet pattern
2. The snowflake written instructions
3. The page with the appropriate snowflake stitch diagrams for you (right- or left-handed)

The Crochet-Along

As you may know, we’re hosting a Christmas CAL in the PlanetJune Ravelry group – you can join in by making any PlanetJune Christmas-themed patterns (including this one!) and posting a photo to the CAL thread. If you’d like to join the CAL by making Snow Star Ornaments, click through to the CAL thread and take advantage of the CAL discount for this pattern.

If you’d like to buy the pattern, you can find it here in my shop (but don’t forget to grab the CAL discount code first!). If you’re not ready to buy just yet, please heart or queue it on Ravelry so you don’t forget about it:

I hope you’ll enjoy my Snow Star Ornaments! And I hope it’s not too early to say Happy Christmas (or seasonal holiday of your choice) 🙂

If you’ve been bitten by the shawl-crocheting bug, it can be easy to build up quite a collection! As part of the Accessories CAL (in the PlanetJune Ravelry group), I thought now would be a good time to discuss how you store your shawls. I used to hang mine in my closet, but I quickly ran out of hanging space, and now I prefer to keep them all neatly folded in a plastic storage box.

Triangular shawls, in particular, can be a bit tricky to fold for storage, so here’s my method to turn any size and style of triangular shawl into a tidy rectangle.

Step 1: Hold your shawl with the point facing down:

Step 2: Bring the top left corner across to the top right corner:

Step 3: Bring the bottom point up to the top left corner:

Step 4: Bring the top right point across to the top left corner:

And that’s it: a perfect rectangle. If your shawl is large, you may want to fold it in half again before you store it (but I think you can figure out how to do that without a photo…)

So now you can go from this:

to this tidy little stack of crocheted loveliness!

And – in case you’d like to make a few more shawls so you can practice your folding technique – you can find all my shawl patterns here 😉

With the new PlanetJune Accessories CAL starting, I thought it was about time to show you these wristwarmers I made from the Front-and-Back Wristwarmers pattern in my book, Idiot’s Guides: Crochet.

They look lovely in person, but I’ve had real trouble photographing them! Because they’re such a rich, deep brown, they look like a solid mass in photos, and you can’t see the gorgeous stitch texture. But I think they deserve to be seen, so please forgive my over-exposed hands in these photos – let’s call them ‘arty’ shots 😉

I made them in a stretch yarn (Elle Stretch) that’s much finer than the yarn I used for the book samples, so I expected to have to use the large size instructions even though I have small hands, but the stretch in the yarn compensated for that, giving me a nice snug – but not tight – fit.

Don’t they fit me well?

Maybe you didn’t think my book IG: Crochet was for you, because you’re way past the beginner stage of crochet? If you enjoy making accessories crochet pattern, that’s definitely not the case! I arranged the included patterns at the end of the book in approximate order of difficulty, and there are some lovely – and a little more advanced – accessories at the end of the pattern section, including the stunning Double Diagonals Shawl (skills: crocheting lace, reading a chart), and the matching Front-and-Back Hat and Fingerless Mitts set (skills: post stitches, working into front/back loop only, making accessories to fit):

IG: Crochet patterns – arranged in approximate order of difficulty from basic (top) to a little more challenging (bottom). All the techniques you’ll need to make all these patterns are explained in full, with detailed step-by-step photo tutorials, in the book.

If you’d like more info on the book, please see my main Idiot’s Guides: Crochet page, which includes links to the week of posts I wrote to explain the book’s contents in detail.

And if you’re making any projects from the book before the end of the year (or any PlanetJune Accessories patterns), join the Accessories CAL in my Ravelry group and show us what’s on your hook – we’d love to see what you’re crocheting…