I’ve realised that I was so busy with the Temperature Snake CAL and starting to write The Essential Guide to Amigurumi at the start of 2023, that I forgot to share the roundup of the 2022 Reindeer Games! I’m rectifying that now, and backdating this post to when I should have posted it so it’ll make sense in the archives. Enjoy this delayed roundup!

The second annual PlanetJune Reindeer Games crochet-along built on the success of last year’s inaugural games, with an even bigger turnout and engagement.

Over the 2 month CAL, we had 22 pages of chat and an amazing 123 completed projects:

Wow! Click through to see the Reindeer Games gallery on Ravelry, including credit for all the participants and links to all the patterns they used!

Here’s the breakdown of all the medals awarded:

• 26 – Santa’s Toy Shop
• 42 – Rudolph’s Gingerbread House
• 02 – Dasher’s Scarf Stand
• 03 – Dancer’s Winter Wear
• 38 – Prancer’s WIP Wrapping
• 02 – Vixen’s Shawl Stall
• 02 – Comet’s Closet
• 03 – Cupid’s Cowl Corner
• 02 – Donner’s Blanket Bazaar
• 03 – Blitzen’s Bag Bonanza

Congratulations to everyone who participated in the Reindeer Games, and thank you to all of you who make the PlanetJune community such a friendly, welcoming environment for long-term fans and newbies alike!

The next Reindeer Games starts on November 1st, and I hope you’ll join us to close out the year with 2 months of crochet fun.

Look out for the announcement here on the blog (or sign up for my monthly newsletter so I can email you with a reminder!)

Writing my Year in Review post every year helps me to see what I’ve accomplished, think about what I’ve learnt, and decide what I’d like to do differently in the following year.

This year has been bookended by accomplishments: I started 2022 by receiving my Silver Award from YouTube for passing 100,000 subscribers, and ended it with the publication of the crochet reference book I always wanted to create: Everyday Crochet.

As most of my work is in digital patterns, having these two physical, tangible items I can hold in my hands feels significant.

Also in 2022, I published half a dozen new patterns and added additional content to several older ones:

And I’ve just launched my ambitious year-long Temperature Snake CAL for 2023, which kept me busy throughout the year as I simultaneously worked on two samples – in secret!

I had no idea how the launch would go, but it’s been a huge success: we have hundreds of people signed up and preparing to start their snakes today (and there’s still time to join us, if you haven’t already!)

Also in 2022, I designed and launched new physical products (enamel pins and stuffing tool handles – sign up for the Crochet Tools list to be notified of the next flash sale!) and created always-available bookplates so I can ‘sign’ copies of my books for you.

I published some new crochet video tutorials, reviewed some new crochet hooks, and updated the worsted weight yarn comparison with additional samples.

In other crafting, I’ve enjoyed collaborating with my husband to make useful 3D printed objects, and I’m still enjoying diamond painting. I made a blanket by finger knitting with loop yarn – and I’m shocked to realise that was the only knitting I did all year! I have more hobbies than I have time and energy…

I crocheted and assembled my giant Christmas tree, and I spent many hours tweaking and editing a photo of Maui to make a portrait on canvas that would be a fitting tribute to him:

And I’ve reluctantly taken up gardening this year too – as our forever home is a new build, the garden was 100% plain lawn, so if I want to encourage wild visitors (which I definitely do!) I need to develop a nature garden. With that in mind I’ve started planting native shrubs and pollinator-friendly wildflowers that will hopefully take care of themselves once they’re established.

My little wild corner doesn’t look like much yet, but fingers crossed it’ll be beautiful in a few years’ time:

Gardening is not one of my natural talents (hence my huge collection of crocheted plant designs that I can’t kill…) and I’ve made some mistakes with my plants this year, but I’ve learnt a lot so I can do better next year. And 15 bird species visited my garden before they all disappeared for the winter, so something has been working!

Business Report

Behind the scenes, I’ve been making progress on a long-term project, making lots of little tweaks to improve and speed up the website and to improve PlanetJune’s visibility in search engines. I don’t have anything flashy to report here, but the incremental improvements all help.

I discovered that Google Analytics has some issues with privacy law compliance (unless you really know what you’re doing), so I’ve switched to a much simpler GDPR-compliant analytics package running on my own server so I can still track useful things like how people find me without accidentally storing any personal data.

On a whim, I ran a quick customer feedback survey through my newsletter, which proved to be very helpful. I’ve implemented some of the suggestions already (like increasing the font size of the newsletter itself), and I have a whole list of other things I can continue to improve in future.

And I’ve been taking courses and researching book design and self-publishing (more on that later…)

Personal Report

Saying goodbye to our precious cat Maui in early January was an awful start to 2022, and although I’ve tried to stay positive, his absence still hits me like a punch in the chest at unexpected moments, almost a year later. But this little bundle of love has really helped with that – Maggie is my constant companion, and keeps me on track.

Healthwise, I had a long-lasting respiratory infection this autumn, my bad knee has declined again (and I’ve been going to physio for that), and I’m still plagued by fatigue that’s crippling at times.

I’m trying to come to terms with the limitations my health puts on my work – there’s so much I want to create, but I’ve found that there’s a hard limit to the energy I can expend, and pushing myself too hard one day just makes me a zombie in the evening or ‘borrows energy’ from the next day so I’ll be too exhausted to do anything all day.

It feels like laziness if I don’t always work full time hours, but I need to remind myself that it isn’t: if I don’t push too hard or expect too much from myself, I can still accomplish the same amount while also enjoying every day instead of feeling shattered – and in the end, isn’t that what life is about?

I know I’m not alone in this, and if you also have a chronic health condition that limits your energy, I recommend reading up about Spoon Theory (google it!), and the book How to Keep House While Drowning is also very helpful if the daily tasks of life are overwhelming.

Looking Back

As of 2022, I’ve been blogging for 16 years (with over 1000 blog posts), I’ve been a published crochet designer for 15 years and self-employed full-time for 13. I’ve published 4 traditionally-published books and well over 250 self-published patterns and ebooks. I’ve worked for a long time to get to where I am today!

Although it may not seem like I’m super-productive these days, I’m juggling a lot of plates behind the scenes, managing life challenges as well as business ones, and I’ve set a high bar to keep making high quality innovative work and offer dependable support to all my customers.

And I’m still doing too much: I thought I’d allowed plenty of time to prepare the Temperature Snake CAL without a last-minute time crunch, but being sick for so long in the fall knocked all my plans off track and I’ve had to work far too hard – even over Christmas! – to get all the CAL pieces in place, two weeks later than I’d planned.

I can’t keep doing this to myself – it takes a huge toll on me, but there always seems to be just one more thing I have to do before I can rest. Speaking of which…

Looking Forward

I had a plan. A grand plan. A hope to leave a legacy in the form of two crochet reference books that I can really be proud of.

Revamping IG:Crochet into Everyday Crochet in 2022 was the first part of the plan, and the second part – replacing my old CIG to Amigurumi with an all-encompassing amigurumi reference book that includes all my tips, tricks and tutorials from my 15+ years as a trail-blazing amigurumi designer and looks and feels as gorgeous as Everyday Crochet does – will be my mountain to climb this year.

I’m not going into this unprepared: I’ve been in the craft book industry since 2009, I have the technical writing and editing qualifications, I’ve done a ton of research on book design, and I’m equipped with endless years of experience in producing patterns and and tutorials. But this will be my first solo climb – my first book where I’m wearing all the hats and aiming to produce a book that’s at least equal in quality to any other crochet book you own, as well as being full of the content you’d only get in a PlanetJune amigurumi book.

I’m ready for this challenge, but I anticipate it’s going to take most of the year to produce the amigurumi reference book of my dreams. I’ll probably have to postpone all my other patterns and tutorial ideas so I can bring this book to life – it needs all my energy and attention, and it’ll be worth the sacrifice.

If I’ve learnt anything this year, it’s that I need to allow even more buffer time than I think I could possibly need, to take account of my health, so I need to be strong and say no to everything else – even the most exciting new ideas and opportunities – if I’m going to bring this book to life.

So, a heads-up: I never post filler content just to keep to a fixed publishing schedule. Although I’m sure I’ll still have some crafty things to post about, it does mean my blog and social media may look a little quiet for much of 2023 – please know there’s a good reason for that!

Creating and publishing my amigurumi reference book will be my Everest, and once I’ve conquered it I’m hoping to settle into a more comfortable, less thrilling, sustainable lifestyle, and enjoy developing my future designs at my own pace. But first, I have an epic challenge ahead in 2023!

2023 Wishes

Last year, I wished for resilience (to keep going through the tough times), grace (to not beat myself up when reality falls short of expectation), and hope (to look forward to the better things to come). When I made those wishes, I didn’t know how much I’d need all those things in 2022.

For once, this coming year, I actually have a concrete tangible goal (and it’s dauntingly ambitious: to write, photograph, edit, design, publish and market a professional-quality book all by myself). So, in 2023, I wish to be grounded, steady, and focused: to move forwards, one step at a time, without getting overwhelmed, sidetracked or discouraged.

I wish those things for you too, no matter what your goals for the coming year may be, and I hope 2023 will bring you health, happiness and fun. Happy New Year!

There are just 4 days remaining until the 2023 Temperature Snake CAL begins in earnest on January 1st – have you picked up the Temperature Snake crochet pattern yet? If not, now’s the perfect time: you’ll need a little time to plan your colours and buy your yarn!

Note: If you’re reading this after January 1st, it’s definitely not too late to join in: you can look up any temperatures you missed online, and it’s easy to catch up on a couple of weeks of stripes in a single crochet session. Please do come and join the fun!

We’ve had lots of planning going on in both PlanetJune groups (on Ravelry and Discord) since I released Part 1 of the pattern a couple of weeks ago, and I thought I’d give you a taste of that today.

Although my pattern includes complete and specific instructions for making a snake that records the daily maximum temperature over 2023 using a palette of 10 colours (plus a bonus colour for the head and tail), it’s great to see how some CAL participants are planning to truly customize their snakes too! We have colour palettes planned that range from 6 colours to over 20 – just look at these stunning combos:

It’s going to be so interesting seeing how differently all these lovely snakes will turn out…

Note: If you’ve already started but haven’t posted to either of the groups yet, we’d love to see how you’re doing too! See how to join the PJ Ravelry or Discord groups here.

In the PJ community, we have members planning to:

• Make a temperature worm (for those who don’t like snakes – just leave off the tongue!)
• Make a pair of snakes: one for the daily maximum temperature and one for the daily minimum
• Use historical temperature records from a birth year
• Use a home weather station to log extremely local temperatures
• Log the change in temperature each day
• Carry along a sparkly thread on special occasion days (like birthdays, anniversaries, etc)

…and much more! So many great ideas – I can’t wait to watch all these snakes growing throughout 2023.

If you haven’t picked up the pattern yet, I just released Part 2 of the instructions yesterday, so you can jump right in and start your snake’s head today if you want!

I’ll be crocheting along with you all year, and I’m about to start making Sophie Jewel, my 2023 snake. These are the colours I’ve chosen for her (if you’re curious, they’re all shades of Lion Brand Heartland yarn, and I’ll be using the warm grey on the right for her head):

This time I’ve chosen to make a Small Daily snake i.e. she’ll be very long and thin! Between those options and the rich heathered jewel tone colours I’ve chosen this time, she’ll look totally different from Spectrum and Kelvin (the snakey samples I’ve been making this year, who you can see at the top of this post).

Ready to join in too? Here are some handy links for you:

• Read more about the Temperature Snake CAL >>
• Pick up the Temperature Snake pattern >>
• Pick up the multipack of Temperature Snake and Snake Collection for a special price >>
• Join the PlanetJune community groups on Ravelry and/or Discord >>

I’m really looking forward to crocheting along with you throughout the upcoming year. See you in the 2023 Temperature Snake CAL!

Would you like to see something amazing? Loooook what I made!!

My giant crocheted Christmas Tree is 108cm (42.5″) tall!

Everything you see here is made from a PlanetJune Christmas-themed crochet pattern – including the tree! – so this truly is a PlanetJune Christmas Tree.

There’s quite a story to how I brought this project to life – I really didn’t know if it was going to work, and had some setbacks along the way – so please settle in and I’ll share the whole adventure with you now…

For my giant tree, I decided to use the Narrow Tree from my Christmas Trees 2 pattern, so it could be impressively tall without getting too wide.

The standard Narrow Trees are on the right here, but this project would be a little larger than all these other Christmas Trees!

I started with the Secure Magic Ring from my Complete Guide to Giant Amigurumi. Together with my trusty 15mm hook and 2 strands of Bernat Blanket yarn, I was ready to begin, but I really wasn’t sure how well this would work: my tree design supports itself without any stuffing, and is completely hollow inside. This is an advantage (I’d like to be able to fold up my Giant Tree for storage when it’s not on display), but giant amigurumi aren’t as sturdy as regular amigurumi – the squish factor is part of their appeal! – and that, plus the weight of the yarn, might lead to some structural problems in the tree, with no stuffing to support it.

So, I started by making a ‘small’ giant tree as proof of concept – just a test project using blanket yarn I had on hand. This tree uses just one ball of blanket yarn, and it worked beautifully! The olive green colour was a little drabber than I’d like for a tree, but it served its purpose: it showed that a giant tree is still sturdy enough to support itself.

With one ball of blanket yarn the tree ended up being 15″ tall (or almost as tall as a small dog):

And I also tried quickly stringing some LED lights on the tree – I could see that, with a little more care in arrangement, that could look nice, but the foliage is pretty chunky on a giant tree, and many of the tiny LEDs in my string were completely hidden, so larger lights seem like the way to go here.

Now that I knew this idea could work, I bought a garbage bag full of yarn (yeah, that’s a standard quantity now!) to bring my vision of a giant crocheted tree to life:

Each of those balls is 300g (10.5oz) of yarn!

My original plan was to make a 4ft tree (120cm), but once I started crocheting my white tree, I quickly noticed how floppy the tree was becoming. I couldn’t remember if my olive-coloured tree had been the same before I added the foliage, or if it was the additional height and weight that was making this one flop, so I started to worry that this supersized version wasn’t going to work at all….

After using 1.25 big balls of blanket yarn, the tree base was 30″ tall, and I decided to pause and add the foliage to the part I’d already crocheted, to see if it would hold itself up with the foliage added, or if I’d need to come up with a way to stabilise it without stuffing – I really don’t have the space to store a huge stuffed tree!

Mmm, this texture looks like giant popcorn kernels to me…

Once I’d finished adding the foliage, the 30″ tree could almost stand up by itself. It was a bit like a wibbly wobbly jelly – it stayed upright, but it was too heavy to hold its shape properly at this size, so I came up with a great (and easy) idea for support: a cone made from poster board inside, exactly like I did for my Pom-Pom Tree but much bigger.

The cone worked perfectly to support the tree, so I decided to keep going. I used the Taller Trees instructions in the pattern to continue as far as Rnd 50, which I calculated would use 6 balls of yarn and make the tree about a metre tall.

In the end I actually used 5.9 balls, and the final height of the tree is 108cm (42.5″ tall) – not quite as tall as the 120cm (48″) I’d originally planned, but still pretty impressive, and plenty tall enough!

The extra height between the 30″ version and the final 42.5″ version made a big difference!

The next problem was that I didn’t have any poster board large enough to make a cone for the taller tree! In the above photo there’s a cardboard box sitting inside the base of the extended tree, with the poster board cone on top, but that made the tree look square at the bottom. I played around with cardboard cones and disks to support the tree, and eventually hit on the idea of using bamboo plant stakes to make a hidden tent that the crocheted tree could slip over.

One of several prototype support systems that didn’t work very well…

My original bamboo + cardboard disks plan wouldn’t hold together securely without taping it all together. I wanted the structure to be completely collapsible so I can dismantle it at the end of the season and reassemble it next year, so I enlisted Dave’s help to design and 3D-print some rings to hold the poles in place and at the correct angle based on my measurements.

Printing in progress

The bamboo doesn’t have an even thickness, so we had to make the holes large enough to fit the thickest parts of the bamboo through. To stop the poles from sliding straight through the rings, I thickened them up with masking tape at the points where they meet the rings. It may not be pretty, but it does the job, and it doesn’t need to look nice as it’s all going to be covered up.

But my concept plus Dave’s experience in designing and printing in 3D made for a winning combination – I’m thrilled with our joint project! The bamboo tent works perfectly; it’s lightweight and sturdy and the crocheted tree slips over the top:

At the end of the season, I’ll be able to remove the crocheted tree and fold it up, then remove the poles from the rings to store everything away neatly for next year!

I’ve just realised that now I have these rings, I could buy longer bamboo poles and make my tree even taller for next year! I still have 4 more balls of yarn, and the tent concept means there’s no problem of the tree becoming too heavy as I add more yarn… But then I’d need more lights, and more decorations, and… maybe I should just leave it as-is… 🙂

I bought a string of 500 LED lights, and after a false start figured out how to wrap them so I didn’t run out. The nice thing about a white tree is you can totally change the look of the tree with different coloured lights. My string can toggle between warm white and various multicoloured options, so I can make the tree look classy or fun at the touch of a button!

The colours don’t photograph very well, but at least you can see that they do change!

And then it was just a case of decorating the tree, and I just happen to have dozens of PlanetJune crocheted decorations just waiting for a home. I’ve never seen them all together before, and I’m delighted by the result!

This tree represents 15 years of PlanetJune Christmases, and I think you can see that my design style ties everything together even though they don’t all match – that’s pretty amazing.

I stepped back to admire my work and I realised there was still one thing missing: a tree topper. Oops…

I thought that would have to wait for next year, but I couldn’t leave the top of the tree empty, so I spent the last couple of days playing with prototypes for a star topper and I hit on a style I really like:

I just finished designing the star today, and this is just a prototype, but it could be the start of next year’s PJ Christmas design..?

So, here it is, my finished giant tree, with and without decorations:

I’m so happy with it!

Apart from the star topper, if you’re looking for any of the patterns for my Christmas Trees or decorations, you can find them all at www.planetjune.com/xmas

And if you’d like to make a giant tree too (maybe not as large as this one!) – or upscale any other amigurumi pattern – my Complete Guide to Giant Amigurumi ebook includes everything you need to know to upscale an amigurumi-type pattern to giant size!

(By the way, the only reason I had to make a scaffolding for this tree project is because it’s not really an amigurumi, as it’s not stuffed – a stuffed giant ami wouldn’t need this level of support!)

I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing how my Epic Christmas Tree project came together! I’m still amazed that I pulled it off – there were a couple of moments there where I really thought it wouldn’t come together – but now I have a beautiful handmade tree that can light up our living room with a warm and cozy glow for years to come.

Wishing a very Happy Christmas to you and your family! ♥

Before we begin: ARTDOT provided these products to me for review, and set up an affiliate account for me, but I’m not being compensated for this review, and, as always, my opinions are my own!

Do you take time off over the holidays to relax and decompress? I love to stay home and do jigsaw puzzles or relaxing crafts while the TV plays in the background.

One of the crafts I’m still enjoying is diamond painting (see my posts from last year), and when ARTDOT approached me about a collaboration, I saw that some of their products looked like they’d be really useful, so I’ve been testing them out in preparation for my holiday crafting sessions!

These are multi-purpose products, so do take a look even if you aren’t into diamond painting – the storage products would also work for beading or other small craft supplies, and the light pad is perfect for tracing designs onto paper or fabric. And I have a special discount code for you at the end of this post!

Storage Case

This is the Diamond Painting Storage Case. I got the medium size – it also comes in smaller and larger sizes, and in a colourful pink patterned version if you don’t love the smart black and purple option.

It’s a nice sturdy zippered case, and I love that purple!

To test it out, I picked up a small diamond painting kit from amazon to play with and decanted all the diamonds using the provided silicone funnel.

Tip: Although I found the funnel useful for this initial step, once you’re working with your diamonds you can tip them straight back into their jar from the tray.

I’m really impressed with this case – it has a convenient screw-topped jar to store each colour, and they’re all mounted in a custom foam base so they don’t get mixed up and out of order!

You can store your pen, tray, spare wax and other accessories in the mesh pocket inside the case lid, so it’s a convenient and portable solution to keep all your accessories together.

Tip: Although the colours and symbols will be different for each kit you buy, the key should always have numbers, so by labelling your containers with the numbers you can reuse them for future kits without having to change the labels!

The storage bag also came with stickers to label the jars, and the above set of bonus diamond painting accessories – I don’t need all the included items, but I really like the extra-large tray!

Tip: I bought myself a couple of fancy resin diamond painting pens from amazon as I find the larger handle much more comfortable to use, but despite trying several fancy expensive tips, the best tips I’ve found are the ones that come on these cheap pink pens! So don’t throw those pens away when you get one with a kit or accessory – pop out the tip and you’ll have spares for your fancy pen handle!

Light Pad

This is the Light Pad For Diamond Painting (although it’s actually a multi-purpose crafting item – I’m also going to use it for tracing punchneedle patterns onto fabric, and I’m sure it has multiple other crafting uses!)

I got the A3 size (that’s ~17×13″, it’s massive!) – it’s also available in both smaller and larger sizes, and the smaller A4 one (~14×10″) would be fine for most needs.

The light pad comes with a stand and binder clips, so you can clip your work directly to it and use it in a more vertical position like an artist’s easel, if that works for you. It also comes with the same accessories (pens, trays, wax etc) as my storage bag above, and a diamond storage box with little flip-top containers.

I can’t believe how thin this light pad is – it just looks like a sheet of acrylic, and is barely thicker than the USB socket! The website says it’s over an inch thick, but that measurement must include the stand – I measured the pad and it’s only 3mm (1/16″) thick. But it really works – it uniformly lights up the surface and has three levels of brightness.

Storage Drawers

And finally, these are the Stackable Diamond Painting Storage (Square Bottle). I got 4 drawers, but you can buy them in smaller or larger quantities too, and each drawer clips to the others horizontally or vertically so you can build a custom storage system of any size.

I’ve had a large diamond painting in progress for a long time, and this (below) was my diamond-storage solution up till now – all the colours were in ziplock bags and arranged by number in a box (apart from the large bags, which wouldn’t fit). But the bags are starting to break after repeated opening and closings, and I’ve had to double up bags in some of the compartments because my box only has 30 spaces and I have 45 colours:

Before: not ideal! All these diamonds are now neatly organised in the storage drawers above.

These storage drawers make wrangling all those colours so much easier! You can choose to buy the drawers with either the round bottles I showed you in the storage case above, or these small rectangular tic-tac-style bottles:

I chose the rectangular bottles as they’re perfect for large kits with small quantities of many colours. Just be aware that the opening in the lid of the tic-tac box is so small that you have to pull off the entire lid of the box each time you fill it, so the flip-top lid is only useful for tipping out the diamonds into the tray, not replacing them after you use them.

UPDATE: The tic-tac boxes work perfectly without removing the lid if you use a standard-sized diamond tray! It’s just the extra large tray pictured above that they aren’t great with. Now I keep the extra large tray for the black diamonds (there are soooo many in my project!) and I’m completely satisfied with using the tic-tac boxes with a regular tray for all the other colours – this setup makes swapping between colours easy and fast.

If you don’t need that many bottles, I’d suggest getting the version with the round screw top bottles – you only get 32 bottles instead of 35 in each drawer, but I think I prefer the round ones.

Tip: Although this product also comes with a silicone funnel, I found it easier to fill the containers directly and skip the funnel.

My Experience

Part 1: Sofa Crafting

I clipped my small diamond painting directly to the light pad. The pad is thin and light, but perfectly sturdy, so I can easily work on my lap on the sofa without any additional support. It’s easy to see the canvas, even in low light when I’m watching TV at night.

I’m using the lowest of the 3 brightness settings, and I love how this is bright enough to clearly see what I’m doing without lighting up the whole room. There’s plenty more power available if you need brighter backlighting for your project.

Look how easy it is to see my project without straining, even at night:

This painting is just a cheap kit I picked up from Amazon – the picture reminded me of the best parts of my time in Africa…

And I unreservedly love this storage case! It’s so convenient to have all my tools to hand and be able to put everything away neatly in seconds when I’ve finished crafting.

I don’t really trust flip-top containers when I’m crafting on the sofa – if I got distracted and a lid popped open, I’d have diamonds everywhere. This is my perfect sofa-crafting solution: the screw-top jars feel very secure, and each jar is held securely by the foam base so they don’t roll around inside the case.

I think Maggie approves too!

That’s my cozy holiday evening crafting sorted – thumbs up all around.

Part 2: Desk Crafting

And now to my big diamond painting! For my birthday last year (well over a year ago now) I received a huge 2x3ft (60x90cm) diamond painting canvas. But I’d only finished a small fraction before it became impossible to work on while sitting on the sofa – you can’t roll up the parts you’ve already completed, so it was getting larger and more unwieldy as I unrolled more of the canvas.

I cleared a desk in my studio as a dedicated crafting space and laid out my canvas there, but I’ve struggled to tell some of the symbols apart when there wasn’t full daylight streaming into the room, so I have to admit that my beautiful painting has languished, mostly untouched, for months.

But now, all that is solved! Slipping the slim LED light pad underneath my canvas makes it so much easier to see the symbols I’m working with.

Light off. The symbols are the squares where I have yet to place a diamond.

Light on! And – bonus – look how easy it is to spot if you’ve missed a diamond (compare the individual symbols near the bottom right with the same area in the previous pic)!

The storage drawers are very handy if you want to keep lots of small materials you need regularly to hand, in a dedicated workspace. In general, I think the portable case is a more versatile choice, but these drawers let me store a lot of colours in a very small space on my diamond painting desk, so they’re perfect for a long-term project like this.

Tip: I’ve taped a printout of the key to my diamond painting just in front of the drawers, so it’s easy to grab the right diamond colour without needing to consult the key printed at one edge of the canvas.

As the tic-tac style bottles are so small, I’ve had to use multiple bottles for a few of the most numerous colours. But I have more bottles than I need, so that’s fine. It’ll be nice to just grab a spare bottle of #3 (black – there’s always so much black!) when I run out instead of having to decant more diamonds from the larger bag!

And oooh, look, my painting is starting to look like something (it’s only about 1/4 done!)…

In case you’re wondering, this is an officially licenced version of a painting I love, Farewell to Anger by Leonid Afremov.

I wanted it large so I could hang it on the wall when it was finished, and so the detail wouldn’t get lost, but I lost momentum when I couldn’t easily work on the project. Now I’m excited to get back to it and make some progress – I love seeing all the colours developing, and it’s so much easier to work now I have all my diamonds conveniently at hand and can see the symbols clearly without straining!

Buying Info – and a Special Discount!

I hope you found this review useful. I definitely recommend getting a light pad and a proper storage solution for your diamond paintings – it makes the world of difference. And I can recommend any of these ARTDOT products – the quality is good and they’re very reasonably priced (and are all currently on sale too!)

All the ARTDOT products I reviewed here are available (and highly-rated) on amazon, but for the best prices you can buy them directly from ARTDOT with free shipping & fast delivery within 2-5 business days to the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Netherland, Spain, Belgium, and Australia.

You get reward points with every purchase, and ARTDOT are offering PlanetJune readers an additional 10% off your order – just go to ARTDOT and enter code JUNE at checkout. Enjoy! 🙂

Guess what? It’s time! The Temperature Snake CAL is now ready to launch, as well as my brand new Snake Collection pattern, and if you buy both the CAL pattern and the Snake Collection pattern together, you’ll get a special bundle deal! For the CAL details, see my Temperature Snake CAL blog post, and for links to both patterns and the bundle, go to the end of this post!

About the Snake Collection crochet pattern

My new Snake Collection pattern includes 4 different snake designs with markings loosely based on real-life non-venomous snakes:

Unmarked (single colour) e.g. Green Snake, Black Snake:

Dual-Banded (two-colour stripes) e.g. Ground Snake, Kingsnake:

Tri-Banded (three-colour stripes) e.g. Milk Snake, Kingsnake:

Spotted (diamond-shaped blotches or patches of colour) e.g. Corn Snake, Rat Snake:

Difficulty
Although the markings and colour patterns of my sample snakes are based on specific real-life snakes, I’ve kept the colour patterns simple so they’re easy to memorise and fun to crochet.

• The unmarked snake is a quick and easy project – try it with a variegated or self-striping yarn to easily add some fun colour.
• For the two striped snakes, I recommend my new Ultimate Stripes technique, but I offer additional alternatives in the pattern too.
• The spotted snake has frequent colour changes throughout, but I’ve included a colour chart as well as the written instructions for the body patterning, and I give instructions for how to manage the yarns with no cutting or tying yarn throughout the snake’s entire body!

I’m especially delighted with how the diamond-shaped markings turned out – the complication of the biased (slanted) stitches in amigurumi meant it was incredibly challenging to come up with a simple repeating pattern that would actually work, and another challenge to continue the spots while decreasing for the tapered tail… But I did it! And now I’ve worked it out for you, it’s a very effective and fairly easy pattern to crochet.

Customizing your Snakes:

• You can make dozens of different snakes by choosing different colours that match other real snakes, getting creative with fun colour choices, and/or mixing different marking patterns in a single snake!
• It’s easy to customize the length of your snake – each design has a repeating body section, and you can choose how long to make your snake by including more or fewer repeats of the body section before you continue to the tail instructions.
• I’ve made friendly PlanetJune-style snakes with solid black eyes, but you can make them look more realistic by using coloured eyes or cat eyes with a slit pupil.

Snake Fun Facts

• Snakes are reptiles that are found all over the world. They mostly eat small animals like rodents, birds, lizards and frogs.
• There are over 3000 species of snakes in the world, and less than 20% of them are venomous – most snakes are completely harmless to humans.
• Snakes have poor vision and hearing, so they see the world primarily through their sense of smell and taste, by flicking their tongue around to ‘taste’ the air.
• Just like your two ears let you tell which direction a sound is coming from, a snake’s forked tongue lets it detect which direction a scent is coming from.

Snake Collection or Temperature Snake?

There’s obviously quite a bit of overlap between these two patterns, so if you buy both, you’ll get a big bundle discount! But they each include plenty of unique features and loads of value, so here’s a rundown so you can decide which snake pattern(s) is/are for you:

Snake Collection:

• FOUR complete patterns for snakes with different markings based on real snakes
• ONE size of snake (it’s the same as the 3/4 size in the Temp Snake CAL)
• All the patterns have a repeating body section, so you can add more repeats before continuing to the tail instructions to make your snake as long as you want!
• Make a complete snake immediately

Temperature Snake CAL:

• Year-long crochet-along with the pattern and instructions released in parts as you need them throughout the year
• Online community group for sharing your progress along the way and asking any questions (it’ll be so much fun to see all our snakes growing in different colours!)
• TWO sizes of snake
• Detailed instructions for finding the temperature range in your area, choosing yarn colours, and creating your custom temperature scale
• Full assistance with getting set up, help selecting your colours, etc in the community groups (or directly from me if you don’t want to enjoy the community aspect of this CAL)
• Printable worksheets for filling in your custom temperature scale and colour code, and logging your temperatures and yarn colours throughout the year
• The worksheets are also fillable PDFs so you can log your temperatures digially if you prefer
• In early 2024, the final, complete, non-CAL Temperature Snake pattern will be released as a stand-alone pattern PDF, including any tips and FAQs that came up throughout 2023, and you’ll automatically receive a copy of that pattern too, in case you’d like to make more temperature snakes in the future!

I hope that’s all clear, and you know which (or both) patterns are right for you. If so, here are the links to buy:

• Temperature Snake CAL pattern
• Snake Collection pattern
• Multipack bundle of both Temp Snake & Snake Collection

But if you still have any questions about either of the patterns or how the CAL will work, please leave a comment below (or email me), and I’ll be happy to help!

Happy Snake-making 😉

No time to read this post? Jump straight to the new Ultimate Stripes for Amigurumi tutorial! >>

In 2012, I first presented the two amigurumi ‘Perfect Stripes’ techniques I’d developed (the Invisible Join and No-Cut Join), and they were vastly superior to any of the other techniques that existed at the time. But now, a decade later, it’s time to revisit my recommendations – can I improve on ‘perfect’? I believe I can!

I’ve spent a lot of time making amigurumi stripes this year – while working on the samples for my upcoming Snake Collection and Temperature Snake patterns (both coming next week – stay tuned!) – and all this practice has led to some innovations and a new recommended stripe method for you.

To compare my three perfect stripes techniques, I worked up each of my new striped snake designs using a different stripe method, so we can clearly see how each method looks in a real project.

L-R: No-Cut Join, Invisible Join (modified – see below), Ultimate Stripes

It turns out that neither of the old ‘Perfect Stripes’ methods was quite perfect – if you’re interested in seeing why, let’s take a close look at both, and then I’ll introduce you to my Ultimate Stripes technique!

(Or you can skip the rest of this explanation and jump straight to the Ultimate Stripes for Amigurumi tutorial – I won’t be offended…)

The No-Cut Join: Good (apart from the seam)

The No-Cut Join is still the best technique I’ve found to get the beginning and end of each stripe of colour to line up without cutting the yarn between rounds.

I’ve carried all three yarn colours all the way along the inside of this snake – there’s no need to cut the yarn at all!

It does give a perfect ring of colour every time, but if you look carefully you can see the seam line progressing along the length of the amigurumi.

Follow the line between the two arrows and you can see the ‘seam’ running along the body of this snake

The seam line is subtle, but it means you don’t get a truly perfect result.

The Invisible Join: Great (but only with a fix)

The Invisible Join can be truly invisible, but (as I discovered this year) that’s only the case if you make sure to insert your hook beneath both the duplicated stitch and the original loops beneath the duplicate stitch. If you fail to do this, you’ll end up with a visible horizontal bar above the first stitch of each round (it’s actually the front loop of the first stitch).

Look closely and you’ll see two horizontal bars (marked by arrows) visible at the location of the Invisible Joins from two rounds.

I didn’t notice this subtlety until earlier this year (so I didn’t mention it in the original tutorial) but once I’d seen it, I couldn’t unsee it (and then my perfectionism made me do some crochet magic to fix my entire temperature snake that suffered from this problem – ugh!)

Here’s the difference made by the Invisible Join ‘fix’:

L: Working into just the top loops (the duplicated stitch) leaves a visible horizontal bar in the round below (marked by arrow).
R: Working into both the duplicated stitch and the top loops of the original stitch just below makes a slightly bulkier stitch that covers that extra bar.

As with the No-Cut Join, the colour stripes do line up perfectly, and yes, there’s no seam with this method, but there is still that error if you’re looking for it, unless you remember to always catch that extra loop in your stitch when you get to the start of the previous round.

If you remember to crochet over the extra loop, it’s practically impossible to spot the join (although the stitch that’s worked over the extra loop may look slightly taller).

Both these methods are still very good, and far better than the jog you get with any of the traditional methods for striped amigurumi, so if you don’t want to change how you work, I’m still happy to recommend either of these methods.

But I still wasn’t satisfied, so I went back to the drawing board to come up with a new method that, in my opinion, is the best ever…

The Ultimate Stripes for Amigurumi: The Best!

After experiencing frustration with both my old methods this year, I’ve come up with a new ‘perfect stripes’ method that looks completely perfect!

• It’s slightly more invisible than the Invisible Join (and you don’t have to remember to catch that pesky extra loop with each round).
• It’s barely more trouble than the No-Cut Join (although it does still mean cutting the yarn with every round, even when you don’t change colour).

With Ultimate Stripes the joins are completely undetectable! Where are they in this pic? I honestly couldn’t tell you…

I’m calling this new method Ultimate Stripes for Amigurumi (as the ‘perfect’ and ‘invisible’ names were already taken with my previous techniques!) and this technique is the official PlanetJune-recommended stripe method from now on.

I believe this truly is the ultimate method for making perfect amigurumi stripes, and I hope you’ll give it a try with your next stripey amigurumi!

Go to the Ultimate Stripes for Amigurumi tutorial >>

I’m so excited to reveal the year-long 2023 crochetalong that I’ve been planning for over a year now! Click here to be notified as soon as this CAL is ready for signups… UPDATE: Sign up now! UPDATE: The CAL may be over, but the complete Temperature Snake pattern and workbook are now available! Click here for details >>

You’ve probably heard of temperature blankets or scarves, where you crochet or knit one row per day to represent the temperature that day. The Temperature Snake is an amigurumi-style riff on that concept!

After crocheting the amigurumi-style head for your snake, its body will progress throughout the year, with one stripe per day representing the maximum temperature of that day.

Choose Your Own Adventure

I’ll show you how to choose a temperature range that suits your climate, and design a colour scheme around your favourite amigurumi yarns. Use a traditional colour scheme, or one that suits your taste. I’ll give you guidance with each step as we create your personalized temperature/colour chart that you’ll use throughout the year as your snake progresses.

I’ve designed the Temperature Snake pattern with several options you can choose between to create a completely custom snake, and I’ve crocheted two samples over 2022 so you can get an idea of how all the options look:

• Two different snake sizes (full sized, or the faster 3/4 sized)
• Two different lengths (one round per day, or one every other day for a shorter snake)
• Two ideas to get you started for colour schemes (the classic rainbow, or red-hot to blue-cold)
• Two different tongues (the easier full-sized tongue, or the more realistic slender tongue)

You can get adventurous and mix-and-match any of these options to create your snake, or copy them all from your favourite of my sample snakes.

Getting Started

Head Start: Although the temperature logging can only begin on New Year’s Day 2023, the pre-CAL will start in early December, so you can get started early by choosing which snake pattern you’ll use, selecting your colour scheme, buying your yarn, and making your snake’s head, so you’ll be ready to get going with the temperature stripes as soon as 2023 arrives.

New Year Start: You can also start the CAL on the official start date of Jan 1st. This is the first day you’ll start logging the daily maximum temperature. (By the way, you don’t need to crochet every day, provided you either keep a note of the temperature, or use a website where you can look it up after the fact.)

Late Start: If you jump into the CAL later, you can either catch up on the days you missed, or choose your time range starting later than Jan 1st – it’s up to you!

Community Fun

The Temperature Snake CAL will be most fun for you if you join us in one of the PlanetJune groups on Ravelry or Discord. (If you’re new to the PJ Community, I’ve just made a new ‘Join the PlanetJune Community’ page with an intro to Rav and Discord, the benefits of each, and links to join the PJ groups – please look there for help and guidance on getting set up.)

At first, we’ll help you decide on your temperature range and colours while we’re all planning our snakes. And throughout 2023 we’ll all be checking in regularly to post photos of our snakes’ progress, giving you accountability and encouragement to keep going, and compare how your snake’s colours are changing compared with everyone else’s.

If you’d prefer to fly solo, you can do that too. As with all PlanetJune pattern licences, I’m available for help by email, so if you want me to advise on your colours or temperature range, I’ll help you get set up. The CAL pattern will be updated several times with the next set of instructions, and I’ll email you each time it’s been updated, so you can log back in and download the new instructions!

Your One-of-a Kind Masterpiece

By the end of the year, you’ll not only have your own unique and personal snake, but also a copy of the complete stand-alone pattern (coming in early January 2024), including all the tips and FAQs that have come up throughout this CAL.

And then I’ll make a glorious gallery of all our 2023 Temperature Snakes, so we can fully appreciate the colourful results of this year-long project. How will our snakes vary across the world? I can’t wait to find out! The great thing about this CAL is that, although we don’t know in advance exactly how our snakes will turn out (and that’s part of the fun) I guarantee that they’re all going to look fantastic!

Will You Join Us?

If you’d like me to email you as soon as the Temperature Snake CAL is ready for signups, click here! Otherwise keep an eye on the blog – I’ll post here when everything is ready for you.? UPDATE: You can sign up now!

I hope you’ll join me in the PlanetJune community throughout 2023 as, day by day and round by round, we mark the progress of the year together as we each create our own colourful Temperature Snake!