PlanetJune by June Gilbank

I haven’t quite finished the AquaAmi patterns yet (I need a few more photos for the instructions, so I’ll need some more daylight for that). But in the meantime, to whet your appetite even more while you wait, here’s my baby beluga whale with his mummy:

He’s turned out just as sweet as I’d hoped he would. I’m going to give his pattern away as a freebie with the big beluga whale pattern. Not long to wait now!

AquaAmi are in the works…

I staged their photoshoot this morning, complete with painted sea/sky backdrop and fabric rocks/sand. The white background I used before really did no justice at all to my white whale. I had a fun arts & crafts evening painting a bristol board with craft acrylics and making a cardboard mountain in preparation for this photo extravaganza.

I’ll show you the full results of the photoshoot on the AquaAmi Set 1 pattern release day (and if you’d like to know when that is, sign up for the mailing list and you’ll be e-mailed the very minute they are available!) but here’s a sample in the form of a much better photo of my beluga whale:

Now I’m thinking she needs a little grey whale calf by her side!

Wow, what a great response to my contest! Thank you so much to all who entered – I didn’t expect to get so many fantastic suggestions. I’ve got lots more ideas now for other animals to add to this series

Now onto the result of part one of the contest: name the range. It was a difficult decision – there were so many great names! I decided in the end to not mention the sea or ocean or mammals, because this way I have the option to add freshwater animals and non-mammals. The name I decided on in the end is… AquaAmi. Short and sweet. This was suggested by several of you, but the first person to mention it was Talvi.

Part two of the contest: the random drawing. There were 92 entries, so after I removed the 5 duplicates from the drawing (and Talvi’s entry) that left 86 unique entries. The random number generator gave me the winner: Gail E.

As an extra bonus to say thanks again to everyone who entered, I have added some runner-up prizes of a discount off their next order from PlanetJune. The 10 runners-up are: Sheryl, Mandy, Eliea, Randi, Suzi.BC, Crystal, Helen, Katie F., Kiirs and Brooke.

Congratulations to all 12 winners – I will be e-mailing you all today to sort out the details of your prizes.
UPDATE: All winners have been e-mailed!

And here’s a sneak peak of the third AquaAmi: a beluga whale.

All three patterns in AquaAmi Set 1 will be released within the next week. And I don’t want to get too mushy, but thank you to all of you for your support; it means so much to me!

A while ago, I bought some glass shelves from IKEA so I can display all my toys in my craft room. We finally got around to putting them up this week:

Please click for the full-size image so you can see them properly!

Don’t they look great all together like this? I just threw them up quickly, so I’m sure I’ll be doing some rearranging (and shuffling them to make more space for the new yet-to-be-born animals ).

Of course, these aren’t all the animals I’ve made. Some of them have new homes:

• Pink bear lives with Dawn in Surrey UK
• White lamb aka Lilly Woolington lives with Nia in Berkshire UK
• Labrador lives with my Dad in Surrey UK
• Both long-haired guinea pigs live with Jen in Michigan
• My original shiba inu Ginger Jr and boston terrier AmiBob live with Kari in Chicago
• One more mystery animal is currently on a photoshoot adventure (more on this later…)

I’m still working on the rest of the craft room – I’ll show you more photos as I complete each area.

PS – If you haven’t entered my contest yet, it’s running for the rest of the weekend!

Here is the second design for my new pattern range (the dolphin is the first). The sea lion was more challenging to design because I wanted to crochet it in one piece, and build the curve of the neck and chest in. That’s quite a challenge using only single crochet, but I’m really happy with how it turned out. I think she looks very sweet:

Now, it’s contest time!

As you may have read from the dolphin post, this new range is all about water animals (but not fish) and the style is simple and sleek with just one colour per piece, to focus on the streamlined shape of these animals.

I’d like to know what you think, so please leave a comment on this post with one or more of these suggestions:

• The name of this range (I’d like something short and distinctive, like my AmiDogs range)
• Other animals you would like to see in this range

There will be two winners:

• Whoever first comes up with the name I like best for the range
• One other commenter (chosen randomly from all entrants; only one entry per person will be counted)

And the prizes? Each winner will receive a pattern of their choice from the PlanetJune range. Winners may either choose from one of the new range of patterns, or one of my existing Fuzzy Friends or AmiDogs patterns.

The contest will run for a week, so entries will be accepted until 7am EST on Monday January 21st 2007.

Good luck and thanks in advance for your suggestions!