PlanetJune by June Gilbank

Let’s get this out of the way first: I was given a copy of this book to review. But I’m not being compensated for this review in any other way, and the following is based on my honest opinions!

Overview

Microcrafts: Tiny Treasures to Make and Share, compiled by Margaret McGuire, Alicia Kachmar, and Katie Hatz, is a craft project book that includes 25 miniature craft projects that use a variety of different methods and materials – and each project is no larger than a spool of thread!

I love tiny craft projects – they can be fast to make, use hardly any supplies, take up no space to display, and have a huge cuteness factor just from their size alone! So I really looked forward to seeing this book, and I wasn’t disappointed.

It’s a hardcover book, with very nice, understated styling. It’s fun just to flip through – the photos are large and clear (larger than life-size!) and the projects are well-displayed. Project instructions are broken down into numbered steps, with illustrations, templates, and tips. It’s all well laid out and easy to follow.

Embroidered felt pendant and a felted planets mobile

The included projects cover a range of styles and difficulties, from the very basic (nutshell boats, miniature paper bunting) to more technically demanding (tiny books, miniature macrame), and a range of materials including paper, felt, fabric, polymer clay, and more. Every project is very different, and there are some original concepts that I haven’t seen anywhere else before, so you really get your money’s worth, and plenty of scope to spark your imagination.

Miniature books

My Experience

I fell in love with the miniature houseplants and macrame hanger but, not having a mini plant pot or access to any live plants, I decided to make all the components myself. I followed the Macrame Hanger (p44) instructions (see below). I also liked the Wire Plant Stand (p45) idea, but not the look of the finished stand, so I came up with my own very simple version. And this is the real beauty of the Microcrafts projects – they are based on such simple concepts that they lend themselves to customizing.

If you’re not already familiar with macrame, the Macrame Hanger is one of the most advanced projects in the book. I’ve never tried macrame before, or any knotting craft other than basic friendship bracelets, so I really put the instructions to the test. Each knot had an illustration that, after a few seconds of study, allowed me to complete it successfully. The concise instructions did leave me puzzled at a couple of places: how thin exactly is “thin cord or embroidery thread or string” and how do I “hide the ends of the knot”, for example, but I think I was overthinking it: I used size 20 crochet thread, as I had it on hand; it looks a little finer than the example, but it still looks great – the exact thread thickness obviously doesn’t matter.

I only found one mistake in the directions: the instruction for the 4 cords that hold the plant hanger says to make them 1/4″ long – that’s far too short. From the picture I assume that should actually be either 1″ or 1 1/4″, but the exact length is something you can decide to look good with your pot, so it doesn’t really matter; I just continued until mine looked long enough.

As for the macrame, it might have been easier to practice the knots at full scale before going micro, but it worked! My plant hanger looks exactly like the picture (above), so I must have followed the instructions correctly:

Genius idea – as you can see, any kitschiness you may associate with macrame totally vanishes on this scale. Isn’t it adorable? Oh, hang on, maybe you don’t appreciate the scale without anything for reference… Here you go:

This is a super-sized pic – in reality the entire pot is less than 1 inch (2.5cm) diameter!

I was inspired by the polymer clay projects in the book to create my plant pot and a tiny succulent garden from FIMO. I love how this project turned out, and I had a lot of fun making it

Peeves

I’m happy to report that I don’t have any major gripes about this book!

The introduction to Microcrafts says that microcrafting is “all about putting odds and ends to good use”, however, a few of the projects are a bit limiting because they rely on specific products in order to make them. For example, the fabric buttons project requires a fabric button covering kit; and I was very intrigued by the temporary tattoos project but was disappointed to find that it requires “clear temporary tattoo inkjet waterslide-decal paper” – you can’t get much more specific than that, and I didn’t feel it really fit with the “odds and ends” claim.

This only applies to a couple of the projects though: the bulk of the Microcrafts projects use basic craft supplies (paper, felt, yarn, glue, string, etc) that you probably already have in your craft stash, or could easily buy from any craft supply store.

And I was surprised to see a book about tiny crafts that doesn’t include a shrinkydinks project – such a missed opportunity! Note to the authors: that’s my suggestion for Microcrafts 2, ladies

Final Thoughts

Microcrafts: Tiny Treasures to Make and Share is a great concept, and well-executed. There’s a wide range of projects ranging from very simple (fun to make for or with kids) to more advanced projects that any crafter will appreciate. The various contributors provide a variety of styles and materials used in the projects, so you’ll definitely find at least a few that appeal to you, and the others may just provide a spark of inspiration to create your own original microcrafts!

If you appreciate cute and tiny, and enjoy crafting, you’ll love Microcrafts. It’s a must-keep addition to my craft book reference shelf!

Today is my first Thanksgiving as a Canadian, and I’m not there to celebrate it… But I am thankful that I’m a Canadian citizen and I’ll always have that, wherever in the world I may be. As it’s not a holiday here, I’ll catch up on some PlanetJune admin instead, and give away some free stuff – yay!

Review and Win contest

September’s ‘Review and Win’ winner is Judy C, with her Kingfisher review:

I LOVE the kingfisher that I made from this pattern and am getting a lot of compliments on it. I followed all instructions for the neatest color changes and now I do have a self-standing, perfect kingfisher of my own! All instructions are clear and easy to follow. I highly recommend this pattern-especially for bird lovers like me!

Congrats Judy! I’ll email you to find out which pattern you’d like as your prize

To be entered into this month’s draw for a free pattern of your choice, just write a review of any product in my shop.

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PlanetJune Affiliate payments

The end of September also marked my first quarterly payments to my affiliates: you’ll all have received your earnings in your PlanetJune account by now, and thank you for referring new customers to my shop!

If you’d like to join the PlanetJune Affiliate program too, you can earn 5% of the value of any orders that are placed using your unique ID code.

Some of my affiliates have yet to generate any sales through their links, so I thought I’d offer some advice in case you’ve done something wrong and are missing out on your commissions:

• You can link to any page in my shop (not the blog)
• Don’t forget to generate your own unique URL for your links from the Affiliate Marketing Tools page (you can find it under My Account when you’re logged in)
• If you’ve put a banner on your site, remember to use your link to my shop

All your links should look like this (except not split onto 2 lines): http://planetjune.com/shop/index.php?main_page=index&referrer=PJ_1234567890

1. They link to a page in my shop
2. They include your unique referrer code (in this case, PJ_1234567890 – yours will be different!)

And a little tip: a lot of people ignore adverts, so you’ll probably have more luck if you e.g. post about something you’ve made from one of my patterns (with a photo), and link to that pattern using your unique link – that’s what my most successful affiliates have been doing, anyway!

If you have any questions about the Affiliate program (or anything else), please feel free to email me.

Wow, what a contest! I so enjoyed reading all your comments on my interview with Liz and Zontee from YarnCraft, and seeing which yarn colours are your favourites.

I had an overwhelming 170 comments to go through, so I did it the technical way so I wouldn’t be working on it all night:

• downloaded all the comments
• stripped out any duplicates
• stripped out any entries that arrived after the end of the contest
• used random.org to choose the winner from the remaining 164 entries

And the winner is:

#15, Chrisie Merriman! Congratulations, Chrisie! I’ll email your Fruit Bat pattern to you, and pass on your details to Zontee at Lion Brand, and she’ll hook you up with your Vanna’s Choice yarn (in your choices of Espresso, Toffee and Scarlet).

No losers at PlanetJune…
Now, I know this means I’ve left 163 people disappointed, and that makes me feel bad, so I’m going to send you all a little something to make you feel better. Check your email

We’ve finally made it to South Africa! This is the view that greeted us as we stepped out of the airport – see the sunrise over Table Mountain in the background. A good start to our new life!

Just getting here has been an adventure in itself. We’ve had difficulties every step of the way: from selling the house in time; to getting our residency & work permits; to getting Maui’s travel paperwork in order – every possible thing always looked like it wasn’t going to work out, and then, at the very last possible minute, we got it sorted. It’s been the most stressful few months of my life, but, in what feels like a miracle, Dave, Maui, and I have all made it through safely and here we are, living in South Africa!

Just to give you an idea of the stress we’ve gone through, here are some highlights of the past week (skip this if you’re not interested in my travel adventures):

• We were 2 days away from losing our Canadian Citizenship application because the South African consulate had kept our passports for longer than anticipated, so our citizenship tests hadn’t gone forward to be approved by the judge, and the judge was now away for longer than we had left in Canada. I finally found an amazing lady at the citizenship office who went over and above for us and managed to get a judge in Ottawa to submit the approval by fax. We became Canadian citizens the day before we left, and, although we didn’t have time to enjoy it on the day – we had to head off to Guelph to get Maui’s export permit as soon as we left the ceremony – I’d just like to say that I’m very happy and proud to be able to say that I AM CANADIAN! I miss you already, Canada.
• When we arrived at the airport on Saturday, we took Maui to the cargo centre to be dropped off. I thought this was just going to be a formality – we had our official South African cat import permit, our official Canadian cat export permit, and the vet certificate to prove he’s healthy and doesn’t need to be quarantined on arrival. But it turns out they also wanted Maui’s rabies vaccination certificate because we were travelling via the UK, which has extremely strict policies on rabies, and apparently the vet certificate listing all his vaccinations wasn’t sufficient. The rabies form was currently somewhere inside our shipping container, already on its way to South Africa. What on earth could we do if they didn’t accept Maui?! After hours of stress and tears (on my part) I tried to phone our vet’s office, which was (extremely luckily) still open at 4pm on a Saturday, and they agreed to fax the missing paperwork directly to the British Airways World Cargo office where we were waiting. Fixed!
• The first leg of our long journey was fine: we arrived at Heathrow and spent 9 boring hours waiting for the next flight. We boarded on time, and then spent the next 5 hours sitting in the plane on the tarmac in London – apparently there was a problem with the plane, and they were trying to fix it so we could take off. As the engines weren’t running, neither was the plane’s air conditioning, and we were all sweltering inside the cabin. They handed out cups of water, but we had no dinner, and they wouldn’t let us out of the plane. At midnight, they finally decided we weren’t going anywhere, and let us off the plane. They found hotels for all of us, but it was 2am before we got there, aand the hotel forced us to check out by 10am, even though our replacement flight wasn’t until 5.30pm. Dave checked on what would happen to poor Maui – apparently he would be looked after by quarantine vets overnight but there was no way we’d be allowed to see him, so we headed off for our hotel and a few hours’ sleep.

After another exciting day spent sitting in the comfort-free chairs at Heathrow, the replacement flight was uneventful, and we arrived at Cape Town airport in time to see the view at the top of this post! We collected Maui – in an amazing turn of events giving everything else that’s gone wrong, that involved nothing more than going to three buildings, signing forms and paying a fee, and then they handed over his crate.

I’d just like to say that Maui is the strongest, bravest cat in the world. He was immediately very happy to see us, and after a long drink, he seemed none the worse for wear for having been crated and away from us for 60 hours – poor baby! He’s settled into our new flat like a champ, and now he’s king of the world, sitting on the windowsill and surveying his new domain, and watching strange and unusual birds flying past the window. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world to have my boy back safely after all these adventures he’s gone through.

Maui! And, oh yeah, some city in the background…

The amazing view from our flat. Cape Town is looking pretty good so far

The only real downside is that we don’t have internet in this flat. I’m trying to get a Blackberry, but they won’t give me a contract as I don’t have a salary or 3 months’ South African bank records – I hope we can find a solution because it’s driving me crazy! Today, we’re visiting Dave’s new workplace, the Astronomical Observatory, and I can borrow their wireless while I’m here and post this. So, if I take a while to respond to emails etc, that’s why – please have some patience while I try to sort this out. If you need crochet patterns, please order through my fully automated shop and not Etsy, so you don’t have to wait for your patterns, and I don’t have to pay for internet to email them to you!

Once I fix the internet situation, I think I’m going to enjoy it here in Cape Town. I know this sounds lame (hello, internet addiction!) but I feel like I’m missing a limb when I can’t get online: not only am I in a strange country where I know nobody, but I’m cut off from my only link to my friends and family. I’ll lose that lonely feeling when I’m back online again, hopefully very soon.

And so begins my South African adventure…

Ah, February, where did you go?! I know I haven’t posted much lately; my time has mostly been taken up with the process of selling our house (which we managed in a very stressful 3-week whirlwind of constant cleaning and tidying, and being kicked out of the house on short notice for hours at a time while it was being shown) and trying to get all the paperwork sorted for ourselves and Maui to move abroad.

With all that on my plate, it’s no wonder that I succumbed to the flu last week! I’m over that now, but now suffering with bronchitis instead, and there’s still an incredible amount of tasks we have to accomplish before we pack our bags and set off on our adventure at the end of this month. So, if posts remain light for a while, please bear with me!

I have all sorts of stuff planned for once this move is over with and I have more time to devote to the blog again: new patterns, new crochet videos, and some other surprises. In the meantime, I do have a very cute (if I do say so myself!) new design that I hope to launch in the next week or so, so look out for that

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Now, with it being March 1st, it’s time for me to draw February’s ‘Review and Win’ contest winner… For February and March, I’m trying to encourage people to review products/patterns that don’t yet have a review in my shop. Each of these ‘first’ reviews get a bonus entry into the drawing. I’ve taken all those bonus entries into account with my drawing, and this month’s lucky winner is Anne R, with her review of my Gossamer Lace Wrap:

I started with the cowl and now am almost done with the wrap just a few rows till I start the finishing rows. I used merino wool in a lace weight. The pattern instructions are easy and complete. Thanks for making it so easy to add an extra repeat I am not a little woman. I like it so much I am waiting on the arrival of some cashmere yarn to make another. Don’t be afraid of this pattern, June has made it so simple to feel like such an artisan and accomplished crafts person. I can highly recommend this pattern.

Congratulations, Anne, I’ll email you to find out which pattern you’d like as your prize!

There are still lots of patterns that don’t have a review in my shop (to get you started, almost all sizes of Clear Eyes, several individual Dinosaur patterns, and almost all the AmiDogs breeds AND sets are currently review-less…), so why don’t you write a review of one of them this month, and get your bonus entry into the March ‘Review and Win’ draw?

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And one last bit of exciting news: the 3rd Annual Crochet Awards (Flamies) nominations have just been announced, and I just discovered that I’ve been nominated in two categories: this blog has been nominated for ‘Best Crochet Blog’ and my book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Amigurumi, has been nominated for ‘Best Instructional/Technical Crochet Book’ – that one makes my heart sing! Voting starts on March 15th (I’ll remind you!) but I’m really happy just to have been nominated

Drumroll, please…. Today I have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a PlanetJune fan or a ferret fan to own a PlanetJune original! It’s very rare that I sell finished pieces – I occasionally accept a commission for a crocheted animal, but I spend almost all my time designing and writing, and prefer to save my hands for crocheting up new designs. But when I came to pack up my toy shelves:

…there was one little baby who stayed behind…

…One little ferret who decided he’d like to be adopted into a new loving home instead of moving to South Africa with me.

This sweet and realistic ferret is a totally one-of-a-kind PlanetJune original. His markings are different to those in my ferret pattern, so you can’t make one like this, even with my pattern!

• He measures 14″ (36cm) long, from the tip of his cute little pink nose to the end of his furry ferret tail.
• He’s crocheted from mohair blend yarns, which makes him fuzzy and fluffy and soft and cuddly.
• Black safety eyes complete his realistic look, so he’s not suitable for children under 3 years old.
• Complete with a signed certificate of authenticity that he was handmade with love by me, June Gilbank!

Would you like to adopt this little sweetie? He’s all ready to go to his new home, and I’ve put him up for auction on eBay with a ridiculously low starting price – far lower than my commissioned rates – so you may end up with a real bargain as well as a one-of-a-kind original!

All proceeds will go to a very good cause: buying a stash of yarn that I can take to South Africa with me so I can continue to create new amigurumi patterns for you in the yarns that you’re familiar with (there’ll be no soft worsted weight acrylics over there: no Bernat, Lion Brand, Red Heart, Patons, Caron… how will I survive?!)

I hope you like my sweet ferret. If you don’t want to place a bid yourself, please pass the link (PlanetJune Ferret auction link) on to anyone else who may be interested in this opportunity.

Or, bid on my ferret right here: PlanetJune Ferret auction

Thank you!

Happy Groundhog Day! Apart from being my favourite made-up holiday, it’s also time for me to draw January’s ‘Review and Win’ contest winner… This month’s lucky winner is Rita G, with her review of my Detail Stuffing Tool:

I used this stuffing tool and the result was great!! I have crocheted a lot of stuffed animals with the result I used the end of a crochet hook, bamboo stuffing tool, or other means to get stuffing into small places. The results weren’t always good. With this little stuffing tool I had great results finding the stuffing went where I wanted it to go so my animal took shape turning out really cute! I look forward to using this tool again and again! I highly recommend this tool!!

Congratulations, Rita, I’ll email you to find out which pattern you’d like as your prize!

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And now back to the important news of today: none of the famous groundhogs (Punxsutawney Phil, Wiarton Willie, and Shubenacadie Sam) saw their shadows this morning, so that means they all predicted an early spring – let’s hope they were right!

I can’t believe it’s been a whole year since the Groundhog-Along! My crocheted groundhog is hibernating in a box in the basement (together with all my other amigurumi) while we try to sell our house, so he’s passing on prognosticating today. I wonder what all the other amigurumi ‘hogs will predict today..?

Happy Groundhog Day, everyone! BING!

Reviews

Just realised I forgot the ‘Review and Win’ draw at the end of June – oops! The June winner is Vicki S – congratulations, Vicki! I’ll email you to find out which pattern you’d like as your prize

I’m really happy to have almost 100 reviews in my shop now – thank you so much to everyone who’s taken the time to review one of my patterns or products over the past 3 months. But there are still lots of patterns that have yet to receive a single review, so please keep reviewing! (It’s an easy way for you to help my business even if you don’t have any spare cash to buy more patterns right now, and you might win the next monthly draw!)

To write a review:

1. Go to www.planetjune.com/shop
2. Browse to the item you want to review
3. Click the Reviews tab
4. Click the write a review button

…You may be July’s free pattern winner!

Vacation

And now a little shop admin: as you may have gathered from my previous post, my fancy-schmancy shoes and I are heading to the UK for my sister’s wedding next weekend. This means that any orders for eyes, noses, stitch markers and stuffing tools received after today (July 11th) will be shipped when I return on July 21st. (That’s the downside of having a one-person business! Sorry for any inconvenience.)

Pattern orders are unaffected: all patterns will still be available for immediate download, as always. I’ll also be checking email while I’m away, so feel free to contact me with any questions.

I have two winners to announce today…

First up, the winner of a copy of Crochet for Bears to Wear.

There were 80 entries, and the randomly chosen winner was… #1! (Huh, how often does that happen?! I guess 1 in 80 times in this case; although it seems strange, it’s as likely as any other number to come up.) So, Susan G of Finagling Life, I’ll be emailing you for your address, and then I’ll mail your book out to you. Congratulations!

And now onto my second winner off the day! It’s time for the first monthly drawing for a free pattern (winner’s choice) from everyone who reviewed one of the patterns or products in my shop.

Since I launched the review capability in my shop, there have been 44 reviews, and the randomly selected winner for April is review #24, written by Katie U. Congrats Katie, I’ll be emailing you to ask which pattern you’d like as your prize!

I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who has already taken the time to write a review for my shop – I think people are going to find them really helpful. But I have a lot of products in my shop that don’t have even one review yet, so please keep those reviews coming, and who knows, you may be the lucky winner in May’s free pattern draw! Each review you post will give you an additional entry into the draw

Some of you may have experienced problems when trying to access PlanetJune lately. I’ve been complaining to my webhost for months about intermittent errors that happen sometimes, for some people, and they haven’t been able to help at all – all they said was that there were no server problems. It’s been highly frustrating!

They finally admitted on Thursday (coincidentally, just after I renewed with them for another year – I hope they will give me a refund!) that my website is just too popular for them to handle:

You are receiving a very large amount of daily traffic to your sites and this is the cause of the long loading times and 503 errors. This kind of traffic is much too large for a shared hosting environment. I would recommend moving your sites to a VPS or dedicated hosting provider.

So, I’ve just signed up for a new and expensive VPS (virtual private server). This means that I won’t be sharing system resources with any other people any more, and I should have more than enough resources for PlanetJune.com pages (and FoldingTrees.com pages, incidentally) to always load quickly and without errors

I have another announcement and a new amigurumi tutorial for you, but I’ll save them until you can see them on the new server – there’s a waiting period until “planetjune.com” points to the new server (it takes a couple of days). If you’ve been having problems loading my shop or any other pages, these should all be resolved shortly – thank you so much for your patience!