PlanetJune by June Gilbank

Over Christmas, we watched David Attenborough’s fantastic Life series, and I’ve had tiny frogs on the brain ever since…

I worked so hard all day yesterday (on the secret project) that I was begging myself to do something relaxing and unrelated to work last night, so I got out the polymer clay and started mixing colours to make a Strawberry Poison-Dart Frog like the one that captured my imagination on Life. While we watched a movie on TV, I played with the FIMO and, 2 hours later, this is what I ended up with:

Strawberry poison-dart frogs (Dendrobates pumilio) are found in several colour morphs, but the most common (the one I made) is called Blue Jeans for its blue legs – isn’t that adorable?!

I was aiming for a life-sized sculpture – David Attenborough had said that they are only 1 inch long and I’d written that down in my ‘ideas’ notebook along with my sketch – but I didn’t quite manage that. My frog’s body is 1 1/4″ long and including the legs sticking out to front and back, the finished sculpture is 1 3/4″ long (I have small hands, so it’s probably smaller than these photos make it look).

I’ve surprised myself – I didn’t know I could do this! Yes, it did take me 2 hours, but most of that was spent on the legs. I hadn’t really considered that I’d have to make 16 teeny tiny frog toes until I got to them – not an easy task! I’m happiest with the shaping of the red clay around the eyes – it turned out exactly how I’d hoped.

I think my crafting ’style’ may be to make things so cleanly that they look like they’d be really easy to make, even though they aren’t. I see it in my crochet designs too – I simplify the shapes and colours to make my patterns easy to follow, but it’s finding a way to simplify them but to keep the most important features of whatever I’m trying to make where this ’style’ comes into play.

There seems to be a crossover between the different crafts that I do: I don’t think I could have made this frog without my years of examining the shapes of animals for my crochet patterns. I suppose you could call it an “artist’s eye”, although that sounds a bit pretentious so I won’t do that! But it’s definitely interesting how my experience in one medium is indirectly improving my skill and confidence in a completely different medium.

Maybe I should make a matching frog in crochet and compare the two! What do you think?

Would you believe I made this pattern over Christmas, and haven’t had a chance to publish it yet?! Time to change that – please allow me to introduce you to my Airedale Terrier. Called ‘King of Terriers’ because it is the largest British terrier, it has a very distinctive appearance with its squared-off body shape and squared-off face!

My Airedale pattern comes with instructions to give it a fluffy beard, and instructions to make one with just the square muzzle shape and no additional beard (it looks more like an adorable Airedale puppy this way!) so you can take your pick and choose the look you prefer. The AmiDogs Airedale Terrier amigurumi crochet pattern is now available in the PlanetJune shop!

If you're tempted by my AmiDogs patterns (the Airedale is the 14th in the series!) don't forget that when you pick a custom set of your favourite three breeds, you get the third pattern for half price! To take advantage of this, choose the AmiDogs Custom Set listing in the shop (you won’t get the discount if you add three patterns individually to your cart).

Have I missed your favourite breed(s)? I’ll be designing more AmiDogs patterns this year, and I’d love to know in advance which breeds might be popular (although I have a few on my ‘must do’ list already!). If you don’t see your favourites in the little pics above, please leave me a comment with your suggestions and I’ll take them into account when I’m picking new breeds to add to my kennel

…and that means it’s time to wrap up the Groundhog-along!

First, let’s cover the all-important prognostication: will we have 6 more weeks of winter? Punxsutawney Phil, Shubenacadie Sam and Wiarton Willie all saw their shadows this morning, forecasting 6 more weeks of winter. But, in my totally overcast Waterloo garden, my amigurumi ‘hog had a different story to tell, saying “I see no shadow. Please can I get out of this snow and get back in the warm? My tail is all wet!” (He’s a little spoilt from living in the lap of luxury on my desk all month). So that’s one vote for an early spring!

Now let’s take a look at some of the other amigurumi groundhogs! (All the following photos are copyright their respective owners.)

Other ‘no shadow’ votes come from mallallory’s Japanese groundhog and IdaDown’s tiny Aussie Bruce (a mini-hog at only 2″ tall!), although as they are clearly enjoying non-wintery weather already, I’m not sure how much stock to put in their predictions!

Refashionology’s Gretchen (note the cute embroidered eyes) and sarahwww’s little guy both wrapped up warm in knitted scarves!

SparklyShiny made 2 sizes of groundhog using different sized hooks, and Craftygal1965 made a cool albino groundhog!

AnnetePetavy’s Marmotte says hello from France, and MissieZee’s groundhog was a destashing project (yay!)

DragonYady’s Shane and Mortaine’s Gordon’s Groundhog.

Silverlotus’s groundhog and kpwerker’s aptly-named Ned Ryerson – BING!

Hattalahutta’s groundhog reports no shadow = early spring for Norway! Veggie’s little guy looks like he might not have enough light to see his shadow either way, but he’s still cute

SisterDiane’s hog says “Sure, I saw my shadow. But I chose to ignore it.” And kitchensinkdye’s Desmond is crocheted from two shades of her own gorgeous hand-dyed yarn! Very cool.

Kingscrown’s groundhog has a lovely variegated colouring, and futuregirl’s ‘Hog Along Cassidy has a ginger topknot!

Aren’t they all great? It’s been so much fun seeing everyone working on them all at once, using different yarns and their own special touches. There are still loads of unfinished projects on the Ravelry group, so I’ll keep updating this post when more finished pics are posted – check back later for more groundhog goodness (Have I missed your hog? Email me with a pic and I’ll add it!)

And now for the all-important question: did your groundhog see his shadow this morning?!

Today is my furbaby Maui’s 6th birthday. (Well, we adopted him when he was a year old, so we don’t know his actual birthday, but we settled on this date for him so it wouldn’t be too close to Christmas.) If you don’t know my lovely boy, here he is:

Awww, handsome cat!

The actual subject of this post is making toys for your cat, and whether it’s worth the effort. I’d like to demonstrate with a couple of toys that I made for Maui three years ago (please excuse the photos - my photographic skills have clearly improved since 2007!)…

__(‘Read the rest of this entry »’)

Looking at my crochet pattern sales over the past few years, one of my least popular patterns has been my poor neglected AquaAmi Polar Bear, and I think I know why…

It’s entirely my own fault: I wanted to keep the design in line with the other AquaAmi (who are all about the shaping and have no features other than eyes), so I didn’t give my polar bear a black nose.

Although it was an intentional design decision, I’m pretty sure that was a mistake from the point of view of selling patterns; most people couldn’t see the implied (invisible) nose and so overlooked the pattern, which is actually a really nicely-shaped realistic polar bear design.

So, let’s try an experiment to see if I’m right… Today I am proud to (re-)introduce the AquaAmi Polar Bear crochet pattern!

Beautiful realistic shaping and a classic black bear nose make this a must-have pattern! Worked in a bulky weight yarn, he stands at about 8″ long and  5″ tall. You can easily resize the design down by simply using a worsted weight yarn and E hook to make a more compact bear, or a couple of baby bears to follow the mama bear around (oh, wouldn’t that be cute?!)

So, why not pick up a copy of the Polar Bear pattern today?

For those of you who’ve already purchased the pattern, don’t worry, this is essentially the exact same pattern you bought! But if you’d like a copy of the new version, please contact me and I’ll happily email it to you!

I’ll be very interested to see what (if any) effect this has on sales of the Polar Bear pattern. As my business evolves, I’ve been learning to focus more on what my customers want rather than arbitrary decisions that only make sense to me. For example, my patterns were originally categorized by ranges: AmiDogs, AquaAmi, AfricAmi, PocketAmi, etc, but the ranges were beginning to dictate which animal designs I could make, and navigating through those categories was not at all clear to anyone except me! Last year, I changed my shop categories to make it easier to find the type of pattern you’re looking for (Wild Animals, Farm Animals, Pets, etc etc) and I think that’s much more intuitive.

There are other things about PlanetJune.com that aren’t as user-friendly as I’d like. I’ve been compiling a list of things that could be better, and I plan to work my way through the improvements as the year progresses, so if you have any suggestions for other changes that would improve the whole ‘PlanetJune experience’ (LOL), please feel free to let me know so that I can add them to my list! Gentle and/or constructive criticism only, please – don’t make me cry