It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to sit comfortably at my computer and edit wildlife photos, so I’m easing back into things with an update of some of the everyday (but still special!) wildlife in my own garden here in Cape Town.

Today I’d like to show you the power of water for attracting and photographing wildlife. Giving garden birds a supply of fresh water for drinking and bathing is obviously very important during the hot dry summer months, but keeping the bird bath full year-round helps attract a wide variety of birds to my garden:

The local meeting place: laughing doves, a common starling and a Cape sparrow enjoying a drink and a bathe together.

Photo op! Olive thrushes, like most birds (except doves) have to raise their heads to swallow water, so it’s the perfect moment to snap a photo.

And sometimes things get slightly ridiculous – this hadeda ibis is a) not a garden bird and b) far too large to bathe in my birdbath… but he didn’t care!

I also have a nectar (sugar water) feeder to attract sunbirds – the African equivalent of hummingbirds, and just as pretty.

The female southern double-collared sunbird has brown plumage, but she’s still tiny, fast, and gorgeous!

The male looks very similar to a male hummingbird, in stunning jewel tones.

But it’s not just sunbirds who appreciate the nectar (and fight over it)…

Cape weaver enjoying a sweet treat.

Male sunbird (left) and Cape white-eye (right) having a shouting contest.

Southern masked weaver has a drink while Cape bulbul demands his turn.

And water doesn’t just attract birds to the garden – by happy accident, I discovered a few weeks ago that if you put a wet branch or leaf in front of a Cape Dwarf Chameleon, it’ll lick the water off it:

Lick!

So now, every time I find a chameleon, I offer him a drop of water on a leaf…

Ooh, a wet leaf… 

Slurp!

So much fun! (And much easier than trying to catch grasshoppers to feed to them…)

I had another happy discovery this weekend. I’m trying to make a wildlife area at the bottom of the garden, but my new indigenous plants need some extra water to help them get settled in, so I turned on the sprinkler and sat outside for a while….

Just sprinkling the garden…

Almost immediately, over a dozen Cape White-Eyes flew in and started hopping from branch to branch under the spray of the sprinkler, fluffing up their feathers, preening, shaking, and enjoying a good shower:

Fluffy white-eyes!

Luckily I have a good zoom on my new camera, as white-eyes are tiny and these were down at the very bottom of the garden, but I managed to get a little video for you to enjoy:

For the best experience, play the video at Full 1080p HD quality and fullscreen it.

Aren’t they sweet?

I hope you enjoyed another glimpse into my local wildlife – I’ll have more to share with you once I’ve had a chance to go through the past few months of photos. 🙂

And if you’d like to encourage more wildlife into your own garden, I suggest adding a bird bath, a pond, or a water feature – it really works!

It was only 9 months ago that I launched my new updated website, and I’d never have imagined that I’d be changing things so soon after all the work I put into developing a single unified look and feel for my entire site. But Google had other plans, and I’ve been back in web developer mode again for the past 6 weeks so I could learn how to meet the new Google requirements for a mobile-friendly website by their deadline of April 21st.

Here’s how Google saw PlanetJune before today:

Old site: not mobile friendly 🙁

It’s been a huge task but I’ve finished with 5 whole days to spare(!) and I’ve just launched the new, responsive, PlanetJune website. (If you’re reading this by email or in a feed reader, please do click through to see the site!)

If you’re using a desktop, laptop, or large-screened tablet, you may not notice any difference in the site – I’ve tried to keep everything as consistent as possible while making it easier to use for those of you using smaller screens. If you previously had to zoom into the pages to read and navigate my site, you should now find that everything loads in a clean, clear format so you can read everything without needing to zoom.

Here’s how Google sees PlanetJune now:

New site: I’m mobile friendly!

The screenshots above are from Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test page – as you can see, PlanetJune.com is now Google-approved for phone and tablet users! (If you need help finding out how to make your site mobile-friendly too, I recommend you check out Google’s Mobile-Friendly Websites guide as a starting point.)

Although I wasn’t delighted to have to to take on such a steep learning curve and large project with only 6 weeks notice, I’m pleased to have done it. Acquiring new skills is always fun and useful, and the more new pages I tested on my phone, the more I appreciated the simplified design for smaller screens. It’s hard to show this in a screenshot, but in case you’d like to get a better idea for how it works, here (below) are 3 side-by-side snapshots of the new homepage at 3 different screen widths (separated by black bars for clarity).

This is called responsive design – instead of you deciding between seeing a full ‘desktop’ version and a pared-down ‘mobile’ version, my page will detect how wide your screen is, and modify the page layout to fit your screen, so the text is always large enough for you to read without zooming in. If you rotate your phone or tablet from portrait to landscape, you may notice that the layout changes as your screen becomes wider!

L-R: instead of shrinking the page to fit the full site onto a narrower screen, now the elements automatically move around to fit your screen at a readable size.

Of course, you don’t need to worry about how it works – the end result for you should just be a seamless and enjoyable browsing experience, whether you use a desktop or laptop computer or any size of smartphone or tablet.

I’d like to thank the many helpful volunteers in the PlanetJune Ravelry group who’ve spent the past few weeks helping me test the functionality and layout of the new site on every device, operating system and browser we could find, to try to ensure it’ll work smoothly for everyone! This rigorous testing hopefully means that I’ve ironed out all the bugs before launching this new site. However, there’s always a chance that something won’t work for you, and I’d be very grateful if you could email me immediately if you find anything that looks strange, wrong, broken or unusable, so I can fix it.

I do hope you enjoy the new PlanetJune mobile-device experience – please let me know if you like it!

With the Baby Animals CAL in full swing in the PlanetJune Ravelry group, I thought I’d demonstrate a couple of simple methods to convert almost* any amigurumi animal pattern into a ‘baby’ with very little effort and no pattern modifications.

Method 1: Use Bigger Eyes

This couldn’t be simpler: to make an individual animal automatically look cuter and more babyish, all you need to do is use proportionally larger eyes than those recommended in the pattern. This works because baby animals (and humans!) are born with very large eyes in proportion to the rest of their bodies.

There are, of course, other differences (larger head, shorter limbs, larger paws, shorter muzzle, etc), but just making this one change can instantly turn an amigurumi dog into a puppy, for example:

Don’t you want a Beagle puppy now?

Method 2: Make a Mother & Baby

The other easy and effective way to make a ‘baby’ amigurumi is to crochet two of the same animal, and make one much larger or smaller than the other. You can do this with no changes at all to the pattern, simply by using a heavier yarn (and correspondingly larger hook) to make a larger adult, or a finer yarn (and correspondingly smaller hook) to make a smaller baby (see my Resizing Amigurumi tutorial for more details).

The blue Elephant is definitely an older sibling to the tiny baby grey ones! 

Mama and baby Polar Bears

And here’s a gorgeous example from Amanda from Australia (via my Ravelry group), who made a Tuxedo AmiCat with her own little AmiKitten:

Awww! Amanda’s absolutely adorable AmiCat and kitten

Method 3: Do Both!

You can combine Methods 1 and 2: try using the same size eyes in both sizes of your amigurumi animal, and they’ll look even more realistically like a mama and baby! Just look at my little brown Alpaca and see how cute he looks with his smaller body and relatively big eyes:

Same size eyes in a smaller body: definitely a baby!

*Caveat

I said you can use these tips with almost any amigurumi animal pattern for a reason: these techniques only work for animals where the baby is essentially a miniature version of the adult. Some animals have very different looking young: most obviously, any that go through a metamorphosis (for example, a baby butterfly is a caterpillar, not a tiny butterfly, and a baby frog is a tadpole, not a miniature frog).

This also applies to birds, who turn from a bundle of fluff into a sleek-feathered adult. For example, using bigger eyes or a smaller hook/yarn combo with my (adult) Emperor Penguin pattern would definitely not give you a Baby Emperor Penguin!

Remember, baby birds look nothing like their parents…

Aside from those few exceptions, these simple techniques are the easiest way to make a ‘baby’ animal without needing a whole new pattern. Give it a try and breathe new life into your animal patterns by making cute baby versions of them, or an adorable mama-and-baby pair!

(And, if you’re tempted to give it a go in the next couple of weeks, don’t forget to show off the resulting amigurumi by entering them in the PlanetJune Baby Animals crochet-along on Ravelry!)

Loved this tutorial? I have so many more amigurumi tips and tricks to share with you!

Boost your amigurumi skills with my latest book, The Essential Guide to Amigurumi, your comprehensive guide to amigurumi techniques and tips.

Do you find my tutorials helpful? If so, please consider making a contribution towards my time so I can continue to create clear and concise tutorials for you:

Thank you so much for your support! Now click below for loads more crochet video and photo tutorials (and do let me know what else you’d like me to cover in future tutorials…)

Knee update

It’s almost 7 weeks since my knee surgery and things are definitely improving week by week. My rehab is both time-consuming and exhausting, and my knee still feels very uncomfortable at times, but I’m supplementing the rehab sessions with yoga-based stretches and massage therapy which are making a big difference to my range of motion. I still have a long way to go, but I think I’ll get there. 🙂

PlanetJune update

You may have heard that Google is changing its algorithm on April 21st to penalise non-mobile-friendly sites. A large fraction of PlanetJune sales comes from Google searches, so non-compliance is not a choice I can afford to make. That means I have to redesign my entire website – not a task I’d have undertaken at the moment, given the choice, but it’ll be worth the effort: soon you won’t need to zoom in if you’re viewing PlanetJune on a tablet or phone.

So, in between my knee rehab sessions, I’ve spent most of the past month learning about responsive web design (thank goodness for online courses!) and I’m starting to convert my site. I could hire someone to do this upgrade for me, but keeping on top of the technology means I’ll be able to make more tweaks and improvements in future; that’d be very difficult to do if I hadn’t built the site myself and didn’t know what was going on behind the scenes. And I’m enjoying having an excuse to update my tech skills, plus it’s really an investment in my business, so it’s a win-win!

Raining AmiCats & Dogs CAL Report

We had so many adorable kitties and pups made during the March CAL! Here’s a sampling of the CAL entries (click the pic to see them all on Ravelry):

Baby Animals CAL

Just a reminder that, if you’d like to join us for the Baby Animals crochet-along this month and haven’t yet bought my new Baby Guinea Pigs pattern, today is the last day to take advantage of the CAL discount on the pattern – although you have the rest of the month to make all kinds of cute amigurumi animal babies, such as the ones pictured below:

Won’t you join us? You can find all the details in the first post of the CAL thread in the PlanetJune Ravelry group 🙂

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.

March’s winner is Rachel G‘s review of my Baby Bunnies:

This is a great pattern! The instructions were clear and thorough, and my finished bunny is adorable. The shaping is great and it has the sweetest expression. I’ll definitely make more bunnies and also try more Planet June patterns (this was my first one). While I was making my bunny, I kept referring to June’s crochet tutorials, and they guided me through everything I needed help with. I don’t have a ton of crochet experience but this pattern presented no problems (well, except for me misreading a line and adding an extra round. But that was entirely my fault and the bunny looks great regardless.). Fellow rabbit lovers-this is the pattern for you!

Congratulations, Rachel – I’ve emailed you to find out which pattern you’d like as your prize!

What’s Next?

The new PlanetJune.com is still very much a work in progress, but thanks to Google I have that firm deadline, so it has to be ready in the next two weeks – wish me luck! I’ll let you know when it’s ready to launch…

For the past 3 years, I’ve been designing baby animal patterns around this time of year – it seems appropriate, as spring heralds the birth of lots of baby animals, and why should it be any different in the crochet world?! I’m keeping up that tradition today, with my new pattern release: Baby Guinea Pigs!

The Story Behind The Pattern

When I was little, my sister and I used to visit the pet shop all the time, to watch the baby bunnies and guinea pigs scampering around together in their big pen in the middle of the shop and choose which were our favourites. In 2012, I remade those bunnies in crochet (the Baby Bunnies pattern), and, in 2014, I added some patterned bunnies to the collection (the Baby Bunnies 2 expansion pack):

What’s missing from this picture?

And yet, something was still missing from my original vision… All those baby bunnies, and not a baby guinea pig in sight! With this pattern, I’m setting that right and finally recreating the pet shop scene from my childhood memories. 🙂

Awww, that’s more like it!

(By the way, while researching for this pattern, I discovered that it’s commonly recommended to not keep rabbits and guinea pigs together long-term. Luckily that never applies to the crocheted varieties, who will stay as cute baby best friends forever!)

About the Pattern

I designed my Baby Guinea Pigs to be perfect companions for the Baby Bunnies – a match in size, style and simplicity, but of course with their own distinctive shaping and personalities.

My pattern includes a quick and easy Single-Coloured piggy (with optional brushing instructions, to make it fluffy as shown in my sample), and three different types of colour patterns. As with Baby Bunnies 2, the three marking types are graded by difficulty:

1. Test the waters by making your first simple colour changes for the Banded guinea pig.
2. Get your feet wet with a few more colour changes for the Blazed markings.
3. Wade into multiple changes per round with the more complex Dutch markings.

Top to bottom: Single-Coloured, Banded, Blazed, Dutch

And if you want even more choices, you can go even further by mixing and matching (use the Blazed head with the Banded body, for example, or use the Dutch foot colours on any of the other piggies) to really customise your guinea pigs!

You can pick up the pattern from my shop right now (but don’t miss the discount below!) I can’t wait to see all your cute baby piggies. 🙂

If you’re not quite ready to buy, how about adding Baby Guinea Pigs to your queue or favourites on Ravelry so you don’t forget about it?

Baby Animals CAL (& Discount!)

The April PlanetJune CAL starts tomorrow, and its theme is Baby Animals – perfect timing for crocheting up some Baby Guinea Pigs (and maybe a few Baby Bunnies too, and some turtles, and an octopus, and…)

But here’s the great thing: you really don’t have to limit yourself. One of the nice things about my baby animals patterns is that, being small, they’re much faster to complete than larger amigurumi, so you can make lots of them! Here’s a sampling of your pattern choices:

Ready to get started? Hop across to the PlanetJune Ravelry group and you’ll find a special CAL discount on the Baby Guinea Pigs pattern waiting for you in the Baby Animals CAL thread! Join us and let’s see how many baby animals we can crochet in April. 🙂

When I heard yesterday that Sir Terry Pratchett had passed away, my first thought was to make something to pay tribute to the man and his work, but then I realised that Terry Pratchett’s writings have already inspired me in so many ways over the years.

Although my heart hurts today, it makes me happy to know that, in 2008, he got to see my tribute to his work in the form of my Amigurumi Discworld, and I hope he could tell from that how much his books mean to me:

See my Amigurumi Discworld page for more details on this project

I’ve just realised that Terry Pratchett’s books have been a part of my life for over a quarter of a century! At age 11, when my best friend recommended Reaper Man to me, I took one look at the skeleton on the cover and decided it looked weird, creepy, and definitely not a book I’d enjoy reading. Luckily I ignored that first impression and trusted my friend (thank you Helen, wherever you are now) and my life was forever changed…

I could never have guessed that Death, that ‘weird, creepy’ skeleton, would become one of my favourite characters in literature! That’s part of the Pratchett genius, and something you can’t possibly understand until you read his books. The characters, the humour, and the way the strands of the plot always come together in such a satisying way by the end of the book – every Terry Pratchett book is a gem.

As time went by, I devoured every new Discworld book as soon as I could get my hands on it. In high school, I was delighted to ‘get’ the Shakespearean references in Wyrd Sisters after studying Macbeth in English classes. During my student days, I queued for hours at Cambridge book signings to exchange a few words with the man himself and get a favourite book or two signed. And commuting through a long Canadian winter (2 hours each way, driving cross-country through the darkness and snowstorms) was made bearable by having my Discworld audiobooks for company.

See my Crocheted Orangutan page for more details on this project

My enduring love for orangutans was first sparked by Terry’s interest in them via, of course, the Librarian from the Discworld books, and also by a documentary he made (Terry Pratchett’s Jungle Quest) about his trip to Borneo to see the endangered orang utan population. This not only led to my year-long art project to make a life-size realistic poseable baby orang utan (above), but also to last year’s trip to Borneo where I trekked through jungle (with my bad knee!) just so I too could see orangs in the wild.

And it’s not just the Discworld books: his Bromeliad trilogy for children (Truckers, Diggers, and Wings) – together with a documentary by my other hero, David Attenborough – inspired me to learn about, and create my own, tiny bromeliad-dwelling frog:

Which in turn led to my Poison Dart Frog crochet pattern:

As you can see, Terry Pratchett’s writing has always been a source of enjoyment and inspiration to me. Last year, I started re-reading all the Discworld books, and once I finish those, I’m going to continue reading (or re-reading) the entire Pratchett canon – I know it’ll be a pleasure.

Although I’m desperately sad to know that he’s no longer with us, Sir Terry will live on forever through his books, which will continue to inspire and delight me and millions of other people all over the world. Now that’s a legacy to be proud of.

Knee update

It’s coming up for 2 weeks since my knee surgery, and my knee is starting to improve! I’ll spare you the details, but the surgeon had to do several procedures inside my knee to fix the damaged areas and to attempt to realign my kneecap so the problems won’t reoccur (it’ll be a few months before we know how well that worked). Once I can move my knee properly again I’ll be going for rehab sessions to get the strength back in my leg muscles.

I’m very relieved I’ve had the surgery before things progressed any further, though: there was extensive degeneration inside my knee, and it would have continued to deteriorate and become even more painful. My main problem at the moment is that I’m still not sleeping well, leaving me feeling exhausted and run-down, so please keep bearing with me – although I have started working again, I’ll need a lot more rest before I’m back up to speed!

I wanted to say a huge thank you to all of you who’ve contacted me with messages of support – this has been quite a scary time, and your kind words mean a lot to me.

PlanetJune operations update

I’ve reopened my Etsy and ArtFire stores and I’m trying to catch up on email, but please be patient if it takes me a couple of days to respond to your questions. (If you asked me something over 2 weeks ago and I haven’t yet responded, please email me again – if it’s been buried in my email I may never find it…)

I won’t be reopening the Crochet Tools section of my shop yet – although I can drive again, my knee won’t be up to climbing the stairs and standing in line at the post office for a while! (If you’re waiting to order a stuffing tool or kit, sign up and I’ll send you a one-off email when they’re available again.)

AmiCats CAL Report

This was one of the most fun PlanetJune crochet-alongs we’ve ever had – although I wasn’t able to add my own comments, I so enjoyed browsing the thread (from my bed!) and seeing all the perfectly-shaped kitties emerging in different colours, with whiskers, collars, embroidered eyes, and other special touches. Here’s a sampling of the CAL entries (click the pic to see them all on Ravelry):

Raining AmiCats & Dogs CAL

Our group rule is that, unless there are special circumstances, like a CAL with prizes, you can always enter WIPs (works-in-progress) into our CALs, so if you didn’t quite manage to finish your AmiCat in February, you haven’t missed out on the AmiCats CAL fun – the March crochet-along started yesterday, and for this one you’ll be able to keep making AmiCats, as well as your choice of my 21 AmiDogs patterns!

The Raining AmiCats & Dogs CAL runs until the end of March, so please join us in the PlanetJune Ravelry group and post photos of your ami kitties and pups to the CAL so we can all enjoy them!

(If you haven’t bought the patterns yet, you can find them all in the AmiCats and AmiDogs sections of my shop – and don’t forget you can save money by buying the complete AmiCats Collection and/or a Custom Set of any 3 AmiDogs!)

Shamrocks pattern

With St Patrick’s Day in a couple of weeks, I thought I’d remind you of my free shamrocks pattern! Shamrocks is a clever little pattern to make sweet shamrocks with a dimensional 3D effect, in two sizes: a realistically-shaped design, and a tiny miniature version:

Shamrocks is a donationware pattern, so you’re free to use it at no cost, and, if you’d like to leave me a donation of whatever you feel it’s worth, you’ll also get a handy printable PDF version as a thank-you (which also includes bonus crochet stitch diagrams for both shamrocks, in both right- and left-handed versions).

PlanetJune in the Media

Thanks to Simply Crochet magazine for interviewing me about crocheted accessories for the article Adorned with Crochet in Issue 27!

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.

February’s winner is Janet Y‘s review of my AmiCats Single-Coloured Cat (2nd from the left in the above photo):

A great pattern, beautifully written and with so many helpful photographs. The shaping achieved is wonderful and the clever way of joining the front legs to the body gives a really neat look. Joining the legs looks a bit daunting at first, but if you follow the instructions and look at the photographs it comes together quite easily. June has captured the essence of a cat perfectly and you will love the end result.

Congratulations, Jan – I’ve emailed you to find out which pattern you’d like as your prize!

What’s Next?

My Mum is arriving today from the UK, so I’ll be mostly offline for the next 10 days enjoying my rare time with her. I do have an extremely cute new design in the works though, so I hope to have a new pattern to release later this month, if my knee cooperates! If not, my primary goal for this year is to get my health back; there’s no need to stress about arbitrary deadlines. I’ll work on it when I can, and rest when I can’t, so the new pattern will be ready when it’s ready. 🙂

In an unexpectedly speedy turn of events, I’ve just discovered that I’ll be going in for my knee surgery this Wednesday! I’m very happy to be getting my knee sorted out after a year of chronic pain, but it’s going to affect operations at PlanetJune for as long as it takes me to recover from the surgery.

Hopefully it won’t take too long, but please bear with me in the meantime. Here’s how it’ll play out:

Patterns: No change

You can always buy my patterns from the PlanetJune shop at any time, as they are automatically available for download. (I will be temporarily closing my external Etsy and ArtFire shops though.)

Shipped items: Order today, or wait…

I won’t be able to fulfill any orders for physical items until my knee is fully recovered and I’m able to drive to the post office again! So, if you think you may need a stuffing tool, stitch markers, or an amigurumi kit in the near future, please place your order by the end of the day today (Monday), so I can ship them to you tomorrow before my surgery on Wednesday.

If you miss the deadline and would like to be notified when PlanetJune crochet tools are available to ship again, please sign up for the one-off notification email.

Help: Check my resources first

I’ll be offline while I recover, so anything that requires personal attention from me will be unavailable for a time – how much time depends on how long my recovery takes. If you email me for help, I’ll reply when I’m able to, but I suggest you check my online resources first – you may well find the answer to your question:

• If you have crochet questions, please visit my Crochet Tutorials page for help. (And if you’re having trouble with a PlanetJune pattern, but aren’t sure what you’re doing wrong, check my Amigurumi Troubleshooter to find which of my tutorials will solve your problem!)
• If you have any other questions for me, please check the FAQ first to see if I’ve already answered them there.
• If those pages don’t answer your question, feel free to ask for further assistance in the PlanetJune Ravelry group, where your friendly fellow PJers are ready and waiting to help! This is the quickest way to receive knowledgeable help from a real live person.

If you still have questions about PlanetJune patterns or tutorials, or anything else you’d like to say to me, you can still e-mail me, but please be aware that I may not be able to respond for days (or weeks), depending on how my recovery is going and how many email questions have piled up.

Please keep me in your thoughts on Wednesday. My health has to be my first priority for a little while, but I’ll be crossing my fingers for a full and speedy recovery so I can get back to coming up with new designs for PlanetJune!