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Easter Eggs pattern

Did you know it’s less than a month until Easter? I’m a little bored with pastel coloured eggs and I thought I’d try to come up with an Easter decoration that’s a little more contemporary and sophisticated. Using a limited colour pattern of chocolate brown (yum!) and ice blue, I’ve designed 8 different eggs (4 designs in each of 2 colourways) that coordinate beautifully together for Easter-themed decorating. You could arrange them in a bowl or basket as a centrepiece, hang them from an Easter tree, or string them into an Easter garland.

When I was coming up with my basic egg shape, I looked around at other crocheted egg patterns, and I couldn’t find a single one that was the shape of a real egg: some were too pointy, some were too long, some weren’t round enough. I’ve tried to make my design closer to a real egg shape, but a little larger so there’s more room to add the pattern! My eggs are just under 3″ long made with Vanna’s Choice yarn, so they would probably be about 2.5″ long if you used a different worsted weight yarn (Vanna’s is, confusingly, much thicker than most other worsteds!)

I found it really addictive to make my eggs – they are so quick and satisfying, with no sewing required. I loved my colour scheme too – it reminds me of really fancy chocolate eggs, but without the calories! Of course, if you’d like to use more traditional pastel colours, or make a multi-coloured set, that would look lovely too :)

If you’d like to make some crocheted Easter Eggs too, my pattern includes 4 egg designs, so that, using only 2 colours of yarn, you can make 8 different eggs. This pattern is a great way to practice crochet colourwork and maybe learn a new stitch. The four egg designs are arranged in order of difficulty, so that novice crocheters can start with the basic plain egg, and move up through the designs, learning something new about colourwork with each one.

If you’re put off by the thought of colourwork and all those ends to weave in, please don’t be: I’ve designed the patterns so that the colours are swapped either every stitch or every row, so that you can just drop the unused yarn to the inside of the egg, and pick it back up again when you work back around to it! Maximum effect for minimum effort – just the way I like it!

You can pick up the Easter Eggs pattern from the PlanetJune store. I’d love to see your finished eggs (and anything else you’ve made from any of my patterns!) so please keep posting your photos to the PlanetJune Crochet Flickr pool!

PS: If you’d like to do some more Easter-themed crocheting, here are my other Easter-y patterns:

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poison dart frog crochet pattern

Remember my polymer clay frog from a couple of weeks ago? I decided to follow my own suggestion and remake it in crochet. As with the clay version, this is the ‘Blue Jeans’ colour morph of the Strawberry Poison Dart Frog (Dendrobates pumilio), with a distinctive red body and blue legs:

poison dart frog amigurumi crochet pattern by planetjune

This adorable tiny tropical frog from the jungles of Central and South America is only about 1″ long in real life, but the crocheted version is poison-free and a much more manageable size (about 6.5″ long).

poison dart frog amigurumi crochet pattern by planetjune

Here she is with her inspiration, my original FIMO sculpture – there’s quite a size difference!

poison dart frogs (polymer clay and crochet) by planetjune

And, just for fun, I thought you might be interested to see my original notebook sketch I made after watching the Amphibians episode of David Attenborough’s Life, which set this whole thing into motion! A little glimpse into my process:

poison dart frog sketch by planetjune

If you’d like to make your own tropical froggy, the Poison Dart Frog amigurumi crochet pattern is now available in the PlanetJune shop. I hope you like her!

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free pattern: amigurumi balloons

What better way to celebrate than with a bunch of balloons? Made in pastels like these, they’d be perfect for baby shower decorations or for Easter. Made in bolder colours, they’d brighten any occasion!

Amigurumi Balloons crochet pattern by planetjune

(I certainly want to celebrate after being involved in a minor car crash yesterday: it could have been so much worse, but luckily nobody was injured. I wasn’t at fault, so my insurance premiums won’t be affected; I just need to take the car in to be fixed soon.)

Round Amigurumi Balloon crochet pattern by planetjune Long Amigurumi Balloon crochet pattern by planetjune

I’ve created 2 different amigurumi balloon patterns for you: the standard round balloon, and the extra-fun long balloon. Each balloon only take a few minutes to crochet, so you can whip up a bunch in no time!

The balloons pattern is free for you to use. If you’d like to thank me with a donation, you’ll get a handy printable PDF version of the pattern as a thank you :)

Enjoy!

Go to Amigurumi Balloons pattern >>

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AmiDogs Airedale Terrier

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!

AmiDogs Airedale Terrier amigurumi crochet pattern by planetjune

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!

AmiDogs Airedale Terrier amigurumi crochet pattern by planetjune

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).

AmiDogs crochet patterns by PlanetJune AmiDogs crochet patterns by PlanetJune AmiDogs crochet patterns by PlanetJune AmiDogs crochet patterns by PlanetJune AmiDogs crochet patterns by PlanetJune AmiDogs crochet patterns by PlanetJune AmiDogs crochet patterns by PlanetJune
AmiDogs crochet patterns by PlanetJune AmiDogs crochet patterns by PlanetJune AmiDogs crochet patterns by PlanetJune AmiDogs crochet patterns by PlanetJune AmiDogs crochet patterns by PlanetJune AmiDogs crochet patterns by PlanetJune AmiDogs crochet patterns by PlanetJune

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 :D

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polar bear pattern redux

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…

aquaami by planetjune

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.

polar bear (old version) by planetjune

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!

polar bear amigurumi crochet pattern (new and improved!) by planetjune

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 :)

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