PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

I’m still concentrating on nursing myself back to health at the moment, so I can enjoy the upcoming Christmas summer holiday (the advantage of living in the southern hemisphere!) and have a fresh start in 2015.

Taking this time off to rest was a very hard decision to make – especially at this time of year: the best time for doing business – but as I slowly inch back to my normal self, I know it was the only choice I could have made. Thank you all so much for your messages of support on my last post (and on Facebook and by email) – they’ve meant so much to me in this very frustrating time.

Now I’m finally starting to feel a bit better, and I have some fun news to share…

Crochet Award Nominations

What a lovely surprise to discover I’ve been nominated for three Flamies:

• Category #2: Best Crochet YouTube Channel (for PlanetJune)
• Category #9: Best Instructional Crochet Book (for The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Amigurumi)
• Category #11: Best Home Decor (for Pine Cone Collection)

Please cast your vote now for your favourites in crochet – you don’t need to make a choice for every category, just the ones you care about.

(And I’d be very happy if your choices include me in the above categories!)

Fan Mail!

Today I received an amazing surprise in the mail: Monica (MagicalAmigurumi) made me a mini-me using the Girl pattern from my CIG to Amigurumi with some clever mods – she’s the spitting image of me, even down to the miniature glasses and a tiny version of my Lacy Bobbles Cowl. Isn’t she great? I feel like a superstar now 😀

me and my mini-me from Monica

ServInt Spotlight

And, just in case my head hadn’t already got big enough, my excellent webhost, ServInt, just featured PlanetJune in a spotlight on their Facebook page. (FYI, if your traffic has outgrown your shared hosting, I highly recommend them for a fast, reliable, easy-to-upgrade server solution.)

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.

By complete coincidence, November’s winner is Andrea M‘s review of my Flamie-nominated Pine Cone Collection:

I just downloaded the pattern on Saturday and made 7 cones over the weekend, they are totally addictive! They are really a lot of fun and this is a very versatile pattern that generates all possible sizes of cones. I will make dozens for gifts and decoration this year, four weeks to go!
Very well explained tutorial with helpful photos and a lot of good tips. Love it, June!

Thank you, and congratulations, Andrea – I’ve emailed you to find out which pattern you’d like as your prize!

Now I’d better get back to resting and knitting and listening to audiobooks, and trying to ignore that persistent voice in the back of my head that’s telling me I really should be working. This recovery is a slow process, but now I think my health is actually improving, I’m going to enjoy relaxing and taking it easy for a while longer…

One of the biggest challenges of a one-person business is there’s nobody else who can keep things going when you can’t. Taking a couple of sick days here and there isn’t a problem, but managing chronic health conditions is a challenge I haven’t found a solution for. I’ve battled to keep going through serious eczema breakouts, 8 months of knee pain, and now 2 months of viral bronchitis.

For the past few months, I’ve been working on a huge project: my first amigurumi ebook, featuring a collection of 6 brand new patterns. My goal was to complete the project by the end of October, in plenty of time for people to make the patterns as gifts for Christmas, but I’ve had to keep moving the deadline as the virus persisted and I just couldn’t get myself back up to speed.

And yesterday was the last straw: my garden sanctuary was invaded again by burglars (there’s nothing of value in my garden, so they hopped over to next door and stole their copper water pipes, leaving their garden full of gushing water). I feel violated and it’s brought all those post-burglary fears back. I’m at the absolute end of my energy reserve: I’m still sick, my knee is in constant pain, and now this…

I have no more strength left to draw on to push through this latest obstacle. There’s just no way I can complete my ebook at the moment to a standard I’d be happy with, and it’s become obvious that I’m not going to get over this virus unless I set my work completely aside and focus on me. I need to retreat from everything and get myself properly healthy – this endless struggle is just too much.

So I’ve decided I have to put PlanetJune on minimum operations for the rest of the year. Luckily, I’ve got my business to the point where it almost runs itself – my daily administration is very minimal now I’ve streamlined the shop to make ordering and downloading automatic and easy for everyone, and my FAQs and crochet help pages have the answer to almost every question you may have. If you need further assistance, our community in the PlanetJune Ravelry group is always ready to provide friendly help. And I’ll still be around, if there’s anything you need from me personally – I’m not abandoning you!

In the new year, I’ll return as a (hopefully) much happier and healthier June, ready to dazzle you with my new pattern collection! And, in the meantime, it’s time to let PlanetJune run itself as much as possible, while I rest and read and knit and breathe, and let my body and mind heal. I really need this. Thanks for understanding.

I’ve discussed the technique of brushing crochet several times before: I experimented with different yarns; I showed you how to convert my Fuzzy Friends patterns to brushed patterns; I told you about different brush options; and I’ve included more specific details of how to brush crochet within each of my patterns that uses the technique.

There’s lots of great information there, but having it all scattered around over several pages isn’t ideal, so I’ve combined the salient points from all my previous brushed crochet posts into a comprehensive tutorial: a guide to Brushed Amigurumi.

You can now also find this tutorial in my Master List of crochet tutorials – your one-stop shop for help if you have any amigurumi questions! – and I hope you find it useful if you’re new to brushed crochet, or have questions about the technique.

PS – If you write your own crochet patterns and would like to link to this info in your pattern, please feel free. As with all my tutorials, you’ll find the easy-to-type shortlink – in this case, www.planetjune.com/brush – at the top of the tutorial page, for your linking convenience. 🙂

I’m a little giddy with anticipation right now, as I’ve almost reached the end of a design process that’s been eluding me for a very a long time. My upcoming collection of animal designs has taken several years and over a dozen prototypes to reach the point where I’m truly satisfied with the shape and construction, and I’m hoping to have the resulting patterns complete and ready to reveal in the next couple of weeks. I can’t wait to show them to you!

In the meantime, here’s the latest PlanetJune news:

Christmas CAL

Now November is here, it’s time to begin my annual Christmas CAL. We’re doing things a bit differently this year: not only will the CAL include all the classic PlanetJune Christmas patterns pictured below – perfect for your seasonal decorating – but you can also enter with any PlanetJune design that you’re making as a Christmas present. We’ll cheer you along between now and Christmas as you crochet your handmade gifts – fun!

You’ll find the links to all my Christmas crochet patterns here

If you’re planning to make any PlanetJune designs as Christmas decorations or gifts, please join us in the PlanetJune ravelry group and share what you’re making…

Crochet Tools Hiatus

I’ve reluctantly decided I have to temporarily close the Crochet Tools section of my shop (where I sell Detail Stuffing Tools, Stitch Markers, Amigurumi Essentials Kits, and free bookmarks) until the new year.

The postal strike in South Africa is still ongoing, and I can’t hazard a guess as to how long your order will take to reach you – the post office workers only shrug when I ask, and I’ve just discovered there are packages I shipped in September that haven’t yet reached their destination. This obviously isn’t acceptable, and I anticipate the delays will only get worse as the strike lengthens and as we approach the busy Christmas season, when delivery times are always longer than usual.

As I have no other way to ship small packets at reasonable cost to you, I see no alternative but to suspend shipping until the strike is resolved, the backlog is cleared, and the Christmas rush is over. I’m very sorry for any inconvenience this causes. If you’d like to be notified when PlanetJune crochet tools are available to ship again, please sign up for the one-off notification email.

Fall CAL Report

My ever-popular Pumpkin was the most popular entry in the Fall CAL, with lots of giant and multi-coloured varieties popping up as well as the classic orange. Here’s a sampling of the CAL entries (click the pic to see them all on Ravelry):

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 winner is Becky G‘s review of my colourful Primroses:

I decided to crochet the entire four plant pot and it looks so pretty. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to figure it out but the directions are easy to follow and looks life like when finished I would definitely recommend this pattern. I love it!

Congratulations, Becky – I’ve emailed you to find out which pattern you’d like as your prize! And thanks to everyone who takes a minute to leave a review in my shop for a pattern they’ve enjoyed – I (and other would-be customers) appreciate every one…

I had a truly magical wildlife experience last week, and I just had to share it with you. Every day, I check the bushes in my garden for Cape Dwarf Chameleons – they’ve been absent for the past year, but made up for it when they finally returned last week, as I got to spend a day with 6 teeny tiny newborn baby chameleons who were each barely an inch long (excluding tail)!

If you’re short on time, here’s a collage of my baby chameleon photos:

And scroll to the end of this post if you’d like to see my baby chameleon video. But, if you have the time, let me share some bigger photos and more details with you first:

When I was doing dinosaur research for Dinosaurs Sets 2 & 3, I was very disappointed to discover that one of my ‘must-make’ dinosaurs didn’t live up to my expectations. Remember the classic scene in Jurassic Park where a man tries to steal dinosaur embryos and is attacked by a venom-spitting Dilophosaurus with a giant expanding neck frill? It turns out that the neck frill (and the venom) were dramatic licence on the part of the film-makers.

But hang on, if I can’t make a scientifically-inaccurate Dilophosaurus for my Dinosaur collection, why not make the real lizard that inspired the movie-makers?! The frill was actually ‘borrowed’ from the 100% real (and very cool) Australian frill-necked lizards.

And hence today’s fun new release: an Expansion Pack for my Iguana pattern, so you can turn it into a Frilled Lizard in full display mode, with gaping mouth and fully-spread ridged frill.

Frilled Lizard Fun Facts

• Frill-necked lizards are part of the agamid family of lizards, otherwise known as dragons or dragon lizards.
• The amazing brightly-coloured mouth lining and dramatic frill work as a defense mechanism for the lizard, to make it look big and threatening when it’s frightened.
• When un-expanded, the pleated frill lies flat along the lizard’s neck with the bright colours hidden, to help the lizard stay camouflaged against predators.
• Frilled lizards live in trees and come to the ground to feed on insects.
• They can reach up to 3 feet long (although a good fraction of that comes from their tail!)

Pattern Info

This expansion pack pattern is intermediate level, but only because of the frill, which requires both changing colours and using different stitches (not just amigurumi-style single crochet). Please don’t be intimidated if you’re new to this type of crochet, though, as I’ll walk you through developing your crochet skills as you crochet the frill:

• In addition to my usual full written instructions and charted stitch diagrams, I’ve included instructional appendices for the frill for right- and left-handers.
• Each appendix walks you through the frill row by row via a special colour-coded stitch diagram for the row and a photo of the frill at the end of the row.
• If you’re printing the pattern, save paper and ink by only printing the right- or left-handed appendix as applicable (or don’t print either, if you don’t need the additional instructions).

What is an Expansion Pack?

• An Expansion Pack is an add-on to an existing PlanetJune pattern.
• The Expansion Pack lets you modify or add to the original pattern to create something else.
• You cannot use the Expansion Pack alone – you must also purchase the original pattern in order to be able to complete the pictured items in the Expansion Pack pattern.

You can buy the Frilled Lizard Expansion Pack for only $2.50 individually from the shop, or, if you haven’t yet bought the Iguana pattern, you can buy the multipack of both lizards, and save 50c on the pair.

Launch Discount

If you’ve already bought the Iguana, you won’t be able to save that 50c. But, for 7 days only, add the Frilled Lizard Expansion Pack pattern to your shopping cart, together with anything else (totalling $5 or more), then use the code FRILLY at checkout and you’ll still get your discount! (Valid until next Sunday: 19th October 2014.)

Note: If you don’t need anything else right now, this also applies to Gift Certificate purchases, so you can pick up a $5 gift certificate now, get your discount, and have $5 in your PlanetJune account ready for your next purchase, or to send to a crocheting friend!

My Frilled Lizard makes me laugh, with his wide open mouth and colourful frill. I’ve also just realised that his colours are very seasonally appropriate in autumnal shades of brown, orange and yellow – although that was just a happy accident based on the colouring of the real lizards! If you’re not ready to make one just yet, don’t forget to heart and queue it on Ravelry so you don’t forget about him:

I hope you’ll enjoy this pattern as much as I enjoyed creating him! 🙂

You may have noticed some changes in the PlanetJune shop over the past few weeks – and now it’s time to officially announce the new and improved PlanetJune shopping experience:

PDFs for Everyone

That’s right, there are no more zip files to deal with! I’ve converted the hundreds of items in my shop (and the thousands of past orders) from zip files to plain PDF files. Now you can download your PlanetJune patterns directly as PDF files that are simple to download and open on any device.

Unlimited Access

As you probably know, when you buy a PlanetJune pattern, you’re buying a perpetual, non-transferable, single-user licence for that pattern. That means you’re entitled to free updates and may download the pattern again (for your own use only) whenever you need to.

Now that process is even simpler: just log back into your PlanetJune account and you can automatically re-download any pattern purchases at any time. There’s no need to contact me first to reset the limit; the links to your pattern PDFs are all stored under their original orders in your PlanetJune account and will never expire.

A little seasonal crochet to brighten your day – details at the end of this post 🙂

About the Changes

When I first started my online shop in 2008, zip files were the way to go, as they were smaller and faster to download, and you could include multiple PDFs in a single zip file. Since the advent of faster internet speeds that rendered smaller downloads unnecessary, and new devices (smartphones, tablets and e-readers) that don’t natively read zip files, I was spending more and more of my time providing technical support for those pesky zip files.

I’ve been working for months on finding a way to both update the shop and convert all past orders without breaking anything or losing any past orders. Slowly but surely I pieced together my strategy. Working out all the code and updates required was a huge technical project, but, once all the plans were ready, it only took a few days to implement.

To make sure my server could cope with the demands of larger files being downloaded more frequently, I actually made the switch over a month ago. Now I’m confident there are no glitches in the new system and everything is running smoothly, it’s time to make this official.

My goals with these web improvement projects are to give you, my customers, a better shopping experience, and to reduce my tech support workload. Since making the above changes, my customer support log reveals that technical queries (related to downloading patterns, logging in, signing up, resetting download limits etc) have reduced from about 35% of my total customer support requests to well below 10% – that means it’s working!

These changes make it easier for you to buy and download my patterns, and that should also save me countless hours of customer support over the coming months and years, especially if/as my business continues to grow.

How You Benefit

Here’s what the changes mean for you:

• Downloading PlanetJune patterns is now simple and straightforward from any computer or mobile device.
• If you need another copy of any of your past PlanetJune purchases, your pattern PDFs are always there in your account ready to download again.
• And, if you missed the download window for any of my pattern updates, they’re all ready for you again now – and at any time in the future!
• Note: If any of your PJ patterns are not in your PlanetJune account – for example, if you bought them on Etsy or ArtFire, or won them in a competition – just email me with the details and I’ll add them to your account, so you’ll have access to any updates, and can download another copy if you need one.

I’m so pleased I’ve finally been able to make this happen. I think it’s going to make a big difference to your shopping experience, and I hope you’ll enjoy using the improved PlanetJune shop!

About that Pumpkin…
If you’re wondering about the giant pumpkin in my photo, I made it from my free Pumpkin pattern, but I used 2 strands of worsted weight yarn and a larger hook (I/5.5mm) to super-size it compared with the normal pumpkins (the orange ones in the background).

If you’d like to try making one too – or any other seasonal PlanetJune crochet patterns – please share what you’re making in the Fall Crochet-Along thread in the PlanetJune ravelry group 🙂

I thought you’d like to see some of the animals I saw on my trip to Malaysian Borneo last month! As this is a craft (and wildlife) blog, I’m keeping this post to just my wildlife photos, but, if you’re interested in knowing more about my trip, I’ve written it up separately as a travel journal with lots more pics: A Bornean Adventure.

We were privileged to get to watch these two rescued orphan orangutan babies in training. Once they’re old enough and have learned how to survive in the wild, they’ll be released back into the forest. (I’ve written more about the orangutan rescue and rehabilitation in my travel journal.)

But, although this would have been enough, we saw far more than just orangutans…