PlanetJune by June Gilbank

Yes, that’s right, I’ve now been blogging for 6 years! Somehow, that doesn’t seem as surprising to me this year – usually it’s a big ‘wow’ moment when I realise my blogiversary is approaching…

Year 6 Review

This was a year of acceleration (and braking). After the stress of Year 5 (an intercontinental move and extended sickness and injury) I started Year 6 trying to get back up to speed. In fact, I worked so hard I was stressed up to the eyeballs. I took December off from designing to relieve the pressure on myself, and took 2 weeks off from everything except essential daily admin over Christmas.

This gave me an inkling of the direction I wanted to move towards – producing high quality work and still having some time left to have a life aside from work. But the break also got me fired up and ready to make changes, so I’ve been setting up a lot of new ‘pieces’ to the world of PlanetJune that will make life run more smoothly for me in future.

I created a new commissions system, finished my new logo, built and coded a new blog design and menu, launched a page to promote people who sell ready-crocheted PlanetJune designs, built up my FAQ, committed to producing at least one video tutorial per month…

Unfortunately, the result of all these grand plans was that I ended up even busier than I was before Christmas!

In between all my other PlanetJune work, I managed to design and publish 24 new crochet patterns:

That’s barely more than the 22 I released the previous year, but I’m aiming for quality with my designs, not quantity. I think it’s always worth putting in the extra time to create something special, and that also holds true from a business/profit standpoint: 1 amazing design can easily bring in more money from long-term sales over the years than 10 mediocre patterns.

Goal Review

My strange situation meant I didn’t set myself any real goals for Year 6:

I need to figure out the logistics of operating from here and how to get myself back on track under such different conditions. [...] I need to prioritise getting settled into my new life and getting my health back. Only then can I really focus on making PlanetJune everything I know it could be if I only had the time.

While it hasn’t been easy, and I’m still not 100% settled here, I’ve basically met the ‘adjusting’ goals and moved onto expanding and improving PlanetJune and the resources I offer – yay!

What’s Next?

If you’ve read my post from a couple of weeks ago on beating craft business overwhelm, you’ll already know the strategies I’m working on implementing to make the ever-growing PlanetJune more sustainable with less work on my part: automating, prioritising, and re-energising.

I love doing what I’m doing here with PlanetJune; I really do. Even though I’ve worked incredibly hard to reach this point, I know how lucky I am to be in the position to do what I love for a living, and I don’t take that for granted. Yes, I am slightly overworked right now because I’m in the midst of building all my new systems, but that won’t last forever and then I’ll have the payoff: being able to concentrate on the work I really enjoy: creating, innovating, and explaining crochet techniques. I can’t wait!

Thank you for continuing to accompany me on my PlanetJune adventure – now onwards, into Year 7!

My Commissions system for new crochet patterns is working out so well – in only 3 months since the launch it’s already pushed me to create three completely original design challenges, with more on the way. I’d like to thank everyone who’s trusted me to come up with high quality designs by pledging towards these pattern commissions…

None of these designs would exist without the people who pledged towards them!

However, as I mentioned in yesterday’s Chameleon post, my system still isn’t perfect – I’m finding it a bit of a challenge to keep up with my commissions and still make progress on the other exciting designs I have queued up on my to-do list. (If you’re part of the PlanetJune Ravelry or Facebook communities, you’ll have more of an idea about those upcoming designs!) Last week, I had three fully-pledged designs in the queue (Chameleon, Sea Otter, Rottweiler), and, at a promised one-month completion time for each design, that puts a lot of pressure on me.

When I originally came up with the idea for my Commissions process, it was going to be just for new AmiDogs breeds, and the $60 limit seemed fair. At the last minute, I added various other animal designs to the commissions list before I launched the system, without really thinking that through. The pledges went crazy and I immediately had to raise the totals to $90 as things were getting out of control. What I didn’t tell you at the time was that I then pledged $30 towards each AmiDogs design myself, as I still felt that a $60 AmiDogs commission is the right level – $90 for a new dog pattern seemed unrealistic.

Even with that price increase, the commissions system still hasn’t stabilised to a manageable level for me, so it’s time to implement another round of changes…

My new tiered commissions include pre-pledges (see explanation below)

Timeframe Extension

I’m modifying the completion time for newly-commissioned designs from 1 month to 6-8 weeks, starting immediately with the Sea Otter – hopefully I won’t need that long for every design, but I’d prefer to have the breathing room so I’m not constantly designing under deadline pressure and I have time to work on my other designs in between commissions.

Price Increase

I’m raising the total commission cost again, from $90 to $120. The minimum pledge amount is still unchanged at $6. I initially kept the price low because I didn’t anticipate that so many people would pledge at the minimum $6 level. I also underestimated the level of interest in this concept – even at $120, it’ll only need 20 people to pledge $6 each (or fewer people with larger pledges) to get a design fully funded.

The price increase will take effect immediately, but, for the two designs that had already been fully pledged at $90, I’ve already committed to designing those at the $90 level, so I’m making up the difference with pre-pledges (see below) so don’t worry, pledgers, Sea Otter and Rottweiler are still fully pledged.

Now, if you’re thinking that your favourite dog breed will never get fully pledged at this rate, don’t worry; I have another new mechanism to take care of that:

Pre-Pledges

While most of the animals on my commissions list have a wide general appeal, the designs that are similar to others I’ve already made (e.g. a new dog breed) are mostly of interest to people who have an interest in that specific breed. The pre-pledge acts as a discounted commission price on these designs, so, for example, a $120 commission with a pre-pledge of $60 needs only another $60 to become fully pledged.

I’ve deleted my own $30 pledges towards the AmiDogs on the list, and replaced them with $60 pre-pledges, so the price for a new AmiDogs breed is now only $60.

e.g. here the Scottie has a $60 pre-pledge, so, with $42 already pledged, it only needs $18 more to become fully pledged

I called it a pre-pledge because it is subtracted from the required commission total before you have a chance to start pledging towards the design. You can see the pink pre-pledge bars on the chart, and the pledged amounts now only need to fill the remainder of the white space to become fully pledged. I hope that makes sense!

The pre-pledge capability means I can now tailor the total price required for any commission to any value up to the maximum. This may come in handy in future as I add more design ideas to the commissions list – it gives the system a little more flexibility.

Next Steps

I’ll be adding some new design suggestions to the list once I’ve had a chance to sort through the requests and choose some new animals to add, but I’ll be away visiting my parents next month, so I’ll probably wait until August to add them to the system.

Although my commissions system may still need some additional tweaks before it reaches long-term stability, I think these changes are a step in the right direction. Once I find the right price point for the non-dog patterns, I think it’ll work very well as the gauge of popularity I’d hoped for (as it already is for the AmiDogs): for example, without these commissions, I’d never have guessed that a Rottweiler design would be in more demand than a beautiful King Charles Spaniel!

It’ll be interesting to see what happens when I add another dozen or so new design ideas to the list – I’ll let you know when I do that, so you can pledge if any of your favourite animals come up…

Finally! 2 months after I announced my new logo, I’ve finally launched the new blog layout today. (If you’re reading this in a feed reader, please click through to get the full impact!)

Hopefully this won’t look too new and strange to you; the purpose of this redesign wasn’t to give my blog a new look, but to make it easier for you to use, and to incorporate the new logo.

Here’s the old look, as a quick reminder:

And here’s the new and improved version:

The new layout is slightly wider, which gave me space to add an extra sidebar down the left-hand side with quick links to the things people most often look for on my site. The actual sidebar contents are still in progress – I’d like to add some more prominent links to my Ravelry group and Flickr group, a link to an as-yet unwritten page for my crocheted art, and other things as and when I think of them – but that can wait until I have time.

I think the biggest improvement is to the header area. Gone is the ‘patchwork’ of images at the top that confused people into thinking they were all pictures of crochet patterns:

Now there’s just one large clear photo, but if you refresh the page (or click to a different page on the blog) you’ll see that the image changes – you get a random one each time – so it hopefully still gives a feel for the variety of my patterns.

The almost-invisible main menu located above the header is gone (did you ever even notice it was there?!), and these impossible-to-find text links in the sidebar (I finally realised that a heading called ‘Pages’ means nothing to non-bloggers!):

Ugh, big block of random text links (circled in blue)

All replaced by a more complete menu bar below the header. Everything you need to navigate my site is organised into drop-down menus, and there’s a more prominent Search box on the right.

I still have to redo the rest of PlanetJune to match the new blog design and make it all more useable, but that’ll take a lot longer – I’d anticipated I’d need 2 weeks to complete the blog redesign, and it’s taken 2 months! I also need to figure out a better way to organise my crochet tutorials – now I have lots of photo tutorials and a growing collection of video tutorials, I’m going to need to find a clearer way to present them to you. Piece by piece, I’ll keep working on it all in between everything else – my goal is to have it all completed by the end of the year.

But, for now, I hope you’ll at least find the blog much easier to navigate! I’ve built up a lot of excellent resources on my blog (crochet and craft tutorials, free patterns, videos, etc), but they aren’t much use if you can’t find them

When I launched my pattern commissions page on Friday, I wasn’t sure which of these scenarios to expect:

• I might get no interest at all – I didn’t think that would happen, but as a worst case scenario I’d have lost nothing more than the time taken to set up the database and code the page.
• I might get a few nibbles, and a pattern commission every couple of months – this was my predicted outcome.
• I may get 2 pattern commissions at once – I didn’t think this was likely, but, just in case, I built in a clause that, should 2 patterns get funded within a month, I’d only collect the pledges for the second pattern after completing the first.

Well, I underestimated – in a big way. (I told you I was bad at making calculated business decisions!)

Eek – it’s going too well!

It’s been less than 4 days and I have one design fully pledged and several others getting close. I haven’t even notified my mailing list yet, so there could be a huge rush of pledges at that point. At this rate, my business could turn into full-time commissioned designs, which, while very flattering, isn’t something I can actually do – I still have all my other hats to wear, and a commitment to continue to make crochet videos and tutorials. I cannot possibly commit to creating more than one commissioned design per month – I can’t work more quickly without the quality of my designs suffering, and that’s not something I’m prepared to sacrifice (and, I’m sure, not something you’d want to pay for).

Plus, the commissions are only for basic animal designs. Anything complicated, or unusual, or something I’d be taking a gamble on in trying to create a design for it, is not going to appear on that commissions list – I have to wait for inspiration to strike before I can design things like that, and I need to leave myself time to let that inspiration happen.

There’d be no dinosaurs or succulents if I only made commissioned designs!

So, here’s my solution: I’m moving the goalposts by raising the total commission amount from $60 to $90. Minimum pledges will still be $6. For the koala (which is already fully pledged at $60) there’ll be no change – I’ve already committed to designing that.

The updated system

If you’ve already pledged:

• Your pledge stands at the dollar amount you originally agreed to.
• The change shouldn’t make any practical difference to you – by the time my koala design is finished, I’m sure the pledges will be back up to the level they were when you pledged, or higher.
• As before, you won’t have to pay for your pledge until I’m ready to begin the design.
• If, however, you feel hard-done-by, just email me if you’d like to cancel your pledge. I’m not trying to con anyone – just to set up a system that will work in the long term.

I’m going with full transparency here and I hope you’ll understand my reasons for this – the whole point of the commissions system is to gauge which design ideas may be most popular, but without making a change to the system, all the options will soon look equally popular! It’s an entirely new system, and the challenge (and also the potential reward) of innovating is that you just can’t know in advance how successful an idea may prove to be.

I expect the pledging frequency will drop after the initial flurry, but I may need to tweak the system a little more in the coming weeks/months, and I may, at some point, have to shift the totals again. If I do have to, my rules will remain the same:

• Any design that is already fully pledged will remain so.
• Whichever design is fully pledged first will be created first.
• The dollar amount of your pledge(s) will remain unchanged.
• If you really need to cancel a pledge, you may do so by emailing me before the design is fully pledged.

The first two points mean there’s still value in pledging early if you’d like to see your favourite design(s) made more quickly, so please don’t see this as a sign to stop pledging!

I think this is the fairest way of doing things, but if you have any suggestions, please feel free to share them in the comments or by email – your opinion counts too!

I have a lot of design ideas – too many, in fact. We live in an amazing world, and there are just too many wonderful animals and plants for me to be able to recreate them all in crochet. To help me decide which to make next, and see which would be popular choices, I’ve launched a new pattern commission model, so now you can help me make my design choices!

The way it works is like a mini Kickstarter, but exclusively for PlanetJune designs. If you’d like me to design a new crochet pattern, instead of commissioning me outright to design it for you, now you’ll be able to make a pledge towards the design commission.

If you love the idea and want to get the pattern as soon as possible, you can pledge the entire commission amount; if you’re happy to wait a while for some other people to come in with you to make the total amount, you can pledge as little as $6 towards the commission, or anything in between.

There’s nothing to pay at the time you make a pledge; the pledges stay active until a design is fully funded, and, at that point, I’ll collect the pledged monies and start designing. Once the design is complete, I’ll email a copy of the pattern to each of the pledgers.

On the Commissions page, you’ll see a graph showing the design ideas currently available for commission, and their current pledge states. As soon as you make a pledge, the graph will update to reflect it:

These are just test pledges so you can see what the graph will look like when I have some real pledges – I’ve reset them all to $0 now.

You can also suggest new ideas to me; I’ll add each to the Commissions list if a) I’d be happy to make a design for it and b) I’m confident I’ll be able to design it in the designated timeframe. More complicated or unusual requests may take longer to get right, so, if I like them, I’ll either design them anyway, just because I want to, or they’ll be available for private commission, with deadlines and pricing dependent on the design itself.

If you click through to the Commissions page, you’ll also get a first glimpse of my new logo in action! Refresh the page and you’ll see the photo in the header changes, so (in future, once the rest of the site has been updated) you’ll see a different photo there each time you go to a new page on my site:

Ooh, new logo alert!

It’s a really exciting time for me at the moment: I finally have the time to make progress on projects that have been in the works since long before I left Canada – everything got indefinitely postponed when things got too hectic… It was exactly a year and a day ago that I first started planning this new Commissions model, so it’s extra-nice to have it finally coded up and ready to go!

Site navigation will improve once I have the new blog design finished, but for now, there’s a text link to the Commissions page at the top of the right sidebar. —>

*click* – that’s the sound of another piece of my grand plan slotting into place

I thought I was being pretty clever when I designed my blog header in 2007: 7 pictures, to give an idea of the variety of crafts I do (crochet, polymer clay, sewing, sketching) and tied together into a ‘patchwork’ using the same zig-zag ‘stitches’ I used to make my Japanese-inspired patchwork lunch bag.

When I designed the shop, I used the same header, but swapped the non-crocheted items for more crochet patterns you can find in the shop.

It was all very clear and self-explanatory, in theory, but it didn’t quite work out that way. Over the years, I’ve had several enquiries about each of the crochet patterns in my blog header that aren’t available in my shop, and I’ve had to explain over and over again that the donkeys are pencil sketches, the tiny flowers and avocados are polymer clay, and the poinsettia is sewn from fabric – they clearly aren’t as obviously non-crocheted as I had thought…

The obvious solution to replace the old design was to design a real logo for PlanetJune: a symbol to represent me and to use throughout my website. I started the process in 2009. I read books and articles on good logo design and I knew exactly what I wanted, but I had problems drawing it without adding too much detail.

I’m too stubborn/controlling to ask for outside help: PlanetJune is my baby and it just wouldn’t feel right for the symbol that represents me to be created by somebody else. Then life got in the way, and it wasn’t until I was forced by circumstance (I discovered that my old zig-zag template is no longer on my computer!) that I thought much about the logo again.

Long story short: I drew 2 pages of sketches, made 15 digital prototypes, and now, 3 years later, it’s finally ready. So here it is: the PlanetJune logo…

I hope it’s obvious what it represents!

As you can see below, I’ll be changing the text for the various parts of the site; I have a square version for avatars and anywhere I need a smaller logo; and I even have two teeny tiny ones for my favicon (the tiny square image you see next to a website’s name in your browser):

I was planning to wait until the whole site was ready to relaunch before announcing the logo, but I have some new web projects that I want to launch in the next couple of weeks, and I can’t use the old design now I’ve lost the zig-zag source file. Redesigning the blog and shop while putting my new projects together and running the rest of my business would be a huge job, and I don’t want to delay the exciting new projects until I can redesign everything.

So: a compromise. The new pieces will have the new design, and the homepage, blog, shop, mailing list, and everything else will get their redesign when I have time. (Although the whole site looks the same, each of those things is built with a different structure going on behind the scenes, so updating each one will be a large individual project.)

I do care about looking professional, but at the end of the day, I am a one-person business, and maybe the rules of professionalism that apply to a larger business should be a little more relaxed for an indie business. Until the day I can clone myself so I have a web designer/developer, a customer service rep, and a creative director, I still have to wear all those hats, and, as my business grows, it’s becoming more difficult to fit everything into my day and still have some sort of a life! I’ve realised it’s compromise or collapse at this point, and so I choose to compromise – the world won’t end if my logo takes a while to spread throughout my website!

I’m so excited to finally have a logo for PlanetJune! I hope you like it too. (And, just in case it wasn’t immediately obvious to you, it’s a yarn planet – what else would PlanetJune be made from?!)

I’m quite happy to bid farewell to 2011: although I’ve had some amazing experiences over the past year, it’s also been the most bizarre and difficult year of my life. Trying to keep my business going while moving halfway around the world and coping with 6 months of illness has been a tremendous struggle, but now the transitional year is finally over and I’m welcoming a new start in 2012!

All things considered though, I don’t think I did too badly on the craft front this year:

In 2011:

• I published 22 new crochet patterns across my amigurumi and accessories ranges, as well as creating my annual ‘art’ project (my amigurumi Columbo, a tribute to Peter Falk).
• I continued to create high quality crochet video tutorials, and detailed, honest book reviews.
• I took an educational approach to a spate of copycat designs with my posts on inspiration vs copying and tips for aspiring designers.
• I started a monthly series of wildlife posts, which I don’t think is too tangential on a craft blog, as they demonstrate my passion for nature – the inspiration for most of my designs!
• PlanetJune Crochet-Alongs took on a whole new direction
  and are now being run directly from the PlanetJune Ravelry group, which has also blossomed into a fun and supportive crochet community. I hope to see it expand further over the coming year!

Now I’m living in Africa, my priorities and my lifestyle have been forced to change. I no longer have easy/inexpensive access to yarn and craft supplies, books, DVDs or video games; instead I have easy/inexpensive access to amazing wildlife, and temperatures that let me explore nature year-round. The time that I once spent on weekly shopping trips to Michaels, I can now spend sitting in my garden and noticing those little magical things like butterflies hatching and fast-as-lightning lizards darting along the walls.

White-Eye eating an orange on the feeder in our garden

It’s a simpler, less materialistic life, and I like that. And, I can (with some difficulty and/or generous friends) import yarn, books, etc, but no amount of money can buy the amazing experiences I can have here. During our Christmas ‘staycation’ we’ve seen wild antelope, tortoises, ostriches, seals, mongooses, and more, all within an hour or so of our house – an endless stream of inspiration for my future designs.

My resolution from last year was to “to figure out what’s really important to me and to be true to myself in the decisions I make” and, although I’m still working on that, I’ve definitely made progress this year. I’m more aware than ever that my biggest barrier is lack of time, and I need to keep examining where I want to take my business and make sure I leave enough time to actually have a life too!

I worked myself into the ground over the past few months, trying to build my business back up after the move and sickness, and trying to keep up with my own ideas and self-imposed deadlines. I’ve spent days and weeks holed up in my craft room trying desperately to get things finished and having little time for anything else, which was, in retrospect, both unhealthy and a little crazy. So I decided to take December off from designing, and try to catch up with other things in my business and really think about where I want to go from here. And we took 2 weeks off over Christmas for a much-needed break.

Amazing white sand beach at Cape Point

I’ve had a bit of an epiphany: although I do, of course, want to have financial success with PlanetJune, I’ve realised that money is not my motivator. Most of the things I enjoy are free or inexpensive, and having the time to do them is far more important to me than making more money. Doing things well is what I value: creating beautiful designs, making high-quality tutorials, learning new techniques, and improving my skills.

So, my resolution for 2012 is to work smarter, not harder. I need to slow down and enjoy life, not let it pass me by while I’m working non-stop. I want to invest time into things that will, in the long run, save me time in the technical and administrative sides of the business, leaving me with a larger proportion of time to spend on the creative and instructional sides, and having a life apart from my work.

Helping people (both customers and potential future customers) is something that’s important to me, so this will hopefully allow me to continue to do that without having to spend all my time answering emails. I’ve already started with an expanded FAQ and a bank of canned responses to common questions I receive by email, and I’ll continue to build on both of those so I’ll be able to spend less time on admin tasks in future.

We picked the most delicious cherries ever at Klondyke Cherry Farm

I have no idea what 2012 will bring for PlanetJune. I have so many ideas and plans that if I could split myself into 3 people I still wouldn’t have enough time to implement everything! But I’m not stressed about that; I actually feel calmer than I have in a long time. I have no deadlines, no commitments, no big events on the horizon, and that’s a huge relief. As you can see from my photos, we’ve had a lovely relaxing break (our first chance to relax in a year and a half) and now I’m looking forward to jumping back into work – I wonder if my new tranquillity will show in my 2012 designs..?

I know I’m very fortunate to be in a position where I can support myself (from wherever in the world I happen to be), but it wouldn’t be possible without your support, custom and friendship, so thank you for following me on my journey! I hope you’ll stick with me for the next chapter

Happy New Year – I hope you have a very happy and healthy 2012!

Although it may not look like it from the new PlanetJune Accessories collection cover pictures, I had a really hard time getting those photos – it actually took 6 photoshoots to get enough decent photos to release the collection. That’s 6 sessions of dressing up nicely and doing my hair and makeup, and 6 sessions of getting strange looks as I posed, feeling like an idiot, in various locations near the river…

It’s spring here, not autumn, and if you look carefully you can see huge palms, giant cacti, and other unusual foliage in the background of my photos, which doesn’t exactly set the autumnal scene I had in mind… Plus my two winters in a row this year, together with months of being stuck in the house with my busted rib, has left me with an even paler than usual complexion (if that’s possible).

It’s a world away from the carefully controlled lighting and scenery I use for my amigurumi photos! For the whole time I was trying to get these pics, I was blessed with bright endless sunshine every day, which meant I was often either squinting in the sunlight, or hidden in deep shadow. When there were a few clouds, by the time I got dressed up and on location, the clouds had all mysteriously vanished. And the wind! The wind here is so strong that it has its own name (‘The Cape Doctor’, as it supposedly blows away all the pollution). My lacy scarves and shawls would not stay put, and my carefully-styled hair whipped across my face and into a mess within seconds.

I was about to throw out all the rejected photos (500+!), but I thought these few were a good demonstration of a tiny fraction of what I went through, so I made them into a little animation for you:

Hahaha! It’s a miracle I ever got any half-decent photos, with winds like this!

And by the way, for anyone who thinks you can’t block acrylic yarn, look at the drape of my shawl! Blocking works miracles on ALL yarn.

Don’t forget you only have until this Sunday to take advantage of the launch week discounts on the new PlanetJune Accessories collection (details in the previous post) – and thank you so much to everyone who’s already bought some (or all) of my new designs! I hope you’ll enjoy crocheting them as much as I enjoyed designing them, and a lot more than I enjoyed modelling for them

One year ago today, I launched my first PlanetJune Accessories collection. I designed my patterns to showcase what I consider to be the beauty and variety of crochet, and also as teaching tools, with full written instructions, technique explanations and tips, photos, illustrations, and charted stitch diagrams.

The customer feedback I’ve had has been so positive (check the reviews in my shop to see!) that I’ve been eager to find time to create another set of designs. Over the past couple of months, I’ve been working hard so that I’d be able to launch my second collection today, on the anniversary of the original launch. For the past couple of weeks I’ve been Accessories-obsessed, stressed to the eyeballs, with no time or energy to spend on anyone or anything else, just to try to get this collection ready to launch by the end of September.

Um, does that seem stupid to you too? Why am I torturing myself by working myself into the ground, just to meet an arbitrary deadline?!

You may not appreciate this (I didn’t, and I’ve been through it before, so I really should have remembered), but there’s a ridiculously large amount of work that goes into creating a collection of patterns when you do it all yourself. Designing, crocheting, pattern writing, testing, stitch diagram drawing, phototography, modelling, editing and layout – the list goes on, and every stage is time-consuming if you want to do it right and produce a high quality product. Then multiply it all by 5 or 6 and try to work on them all simultaneously without losing your mind….

This process has made me think seriously about the way I’m running my business. I have a lot of ideas, and a lot of things I want to create and accomplish. But there’s only one June, and only so many hours in the day. I set myself big goals and push myself far too hard to reach them – I don’t want to get sick again, or burn out.

So that’s why today’s post is to announce that I will not be releasing a new PJ Accessories collection today: I’m going to take a few more days and make sure I do justice to my new designs. I’m really excited about them, and I hope you’ll love them too!

Here’s a little taster of what you can expect:

Look out for the new PlanetJune Accessories collection, coming soon, with launch week discounts! If you want to make sure you don’t miss them, sign up for my newsletter – I’m going to hold back my September update so I’ll send out the newsletter, including the discount codes, as soon as the collection is ready.

And now, I think I’m going to stop working (for a few minutes, at least)

Have you entered my contest to win your choice of Vanna’s Choice yarns and a PlanetJune pattern? It’s open until Thursday – don’t forget to get your entry in!

I thought you might like to see my new photo studio and a glimpse behind the magic (ha!) that goes into my crochet pattern photos. Things have changed for the better since I last showed you my light tent setup and tutorial photography setup. My photo setup in Canada included 2 swing lamps and 2 goose-neck lamps (all with daylight bulbs) and my light tent:

Light tent in the good old days

It worked well, and I was happy with it. The only problem was when I made something too large to photograph in the light tent (e.g. Reepicheep, dinosaur group shots): then I had to fall back on the (thankfully) good natural light in my craft room and wait for a bright, overcast afternoon to give me the right conditions to shoot in daylight.

My new craft room has no natural light to speak of – our house is on one level, the windows are small, and there are trees right outside my window, so it’s dim inside on even the sunniest day. (I’m sure this will be a blessing in the heat of the South African summer!)

Pretty view, but dark interior

As I couldn’t bring my old lamps with me (wrong voltage), I had to sell them all before I left and buy everything again at this end. There’s no IKEA or equivalent here, and 4 lamps and 4 bulbs at South African prices was not an appealing prospect. I also couldn’t find those daylight-coloured bulbs anywhere…

All these factors made a perfect excuse to upgrade my setup and invest in some professional lighting. I found an excellent local photographic shop, Studio22, who helped me to find a pro lighting solution that was within my budget. I bought 2 light stands, 2 fluorescent lamp heads (each with 2 sockets), 4x38W daylight bulbs (expensive, but they should last for years), and 2 translucent white umbrellas.

The new setup

And oh, what a difference!

• I can light my static scenes with an even light without having to fiddle with 4 lamps to get them all into position.
• The bulbs are cool, so I can shoot for hours without raising the temperature in my room.
• Without the confines of my light tent, I can light anything that fits on my desk, at any time of day or night.
• I can set up to shoot a tutorial or video and light the scene much more easily and evenly (and without roasting under the hot lights!)

Of course, nothing is perfect: my craft room isn’t huge, and those umbrellas take up a lot of room! When I have it all assembled, I have to pick my way around them to reach the computer. And this desk is also my sewing table, so I have to get everything out of the way if I want to set up my sewing machine. It’s really not a big deal, though: to dismantle, I just furl the umbrellas and move the light stands (still set up and plugged in) and camera tripod to the corner of the room. When I next need a photo, it only takes a minute to set it all up again.

Setting the scene (that’s my camera in the foreground)

On the desk, I create my scene. In this case, I have:

• My handpainted ‘dappled forest’ backdrop, stuck to the wall with sticky tack. (I painted this backdrop for my AfricAmi set in 2008, and I’m so relieved it survived the move without the paint cracking.)
• A fabric ‘ground’
• Fake foliage courtesy of the dollar store (I really miss dollar stores for buying props!)
• And, of course, the star of the show – my Aardvark in this case

I complete the setup with my camera on a tripod in front of the desk. I use the remote control (toe-operated!) when I’m making tutorials or videos, sat behind the camera with my hands in view, and otherwise take photos the regular way.

Hopefully my pattern photos will now be so irresistible that the business will repay my equipment investment in no time!