PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

I’m still deeply ensconced in my secret project, so I haven’t had anything crafty to post about recently – hopefully that will all change soon! In the meantime, I thought I’d share a quick nectar recipe for those of you who are lucky enough to live in an area visited by hummingbirds.

Hummingbirds are fascinating little miracles – so tiny and so fast, it’s hard to believe they can exist! They are only 3-4 inches long from beak to tail and they beat their wings around 60 times per second, which produces the humming sound for which they were named. Coming from the UK, I had never even seen a hummingbird until a couple of years ago, and now I can see Ruby-throated Hummingbirds daily (in summer) in my own garden, just by putting up a little nectar feeder for them 🙂

You can buy powdered hummingbird nectar, but it’s a bit messy to prepare, and expensive. It’s actually super-simple to make your own nectar for feeding hummingbirds: all you need is sugar and water! Hummingbird feeders are red, so the colour of the feeder will attract the birds and there is no need to add red colour to the nectar.

• Ingredients: 1 part granulated white sugar and 4 parts tap water. (I use 1/2 cup sugar and 2 cups water, which makes a 2-week supply for my hummers.)
• Place the sugar and water in a saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring occasionally.
• Cover the suacepan and boil the nectar for a couple of minutes (this retards mould growth).
• Allow to cool to room temperature, then pour into a clean hummingbird feeder.
• Store leftover nectar in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.
• Replace the nectar and clean your feeder twice a week to prevent mould.
• Enjoy the beauty of the visiting hummingbirds!

My craft room/office is upstairs, so it gets pretty hot in summer without the air conditioning on, especially with my big computer purring away generating heat all day. I didn’t want to run the air conditioning in the house all day, every day, when I only use this one room during the daytime, so I bought myself a cheap desk fan. It works really well – I don’t feel sluggish any more, and my concentration has increased dramatically! The only downside is that it’s not pretty. Not at all:

Ugh, that’s really not what I want to look all day – it’s hardly part of my ideal creative ambience! Now, if only there was something I could do to improve the appearance… Hang on – I’m a crafter! I make things! No problemo:

I revisited my own teabag folding tutorial, and used some beautiful origami paper from Alice to make a little paper medallion to cover the logo in the centre of the fan. It makes such a difference to the overall appearance. Notice the cool colour palette in the paper design, which adds to the effect of the fan – now just looking at it makes me feel cooler!

It’s just a little thing, but it makes me happy 🙂

In case you’d like to make your own paper embellishments, I used two squares of 3″ origami paper which I quartered to make eight 1.5″ squares. This made a medallion of just over 2″ wide. To make a larger medallion, just start with larger paper squares. See my tutorial for the simple instructions – it’s a lot easier than it looks!

It’s taken some time, but my Ring-Tailed Lemur crochet pattern is finally ready and available in the shop. A little info about this pattern and why it’s taken so long to prepare: it’s definitely an intermediate level pattern – not for beginners! Here’s why:

• There are multiple colour changes in the head. If you need a refresher on how to make neat colour changes in single crochet, see my Colour Changes tutorial.
• After all the pieces are crocheted, there’s a lot of stitching together to do. See my Joining Amigurumi tutorial for tips on how to stitch pieces together neatly.

If all this sounds daunting, don’t worry! The pattern is 11 pages long, with very detailed step-by-step instructions, and photographs to accompany every step. And, as with all my patterns, you can always e-mail me if you have any queries – I’m always happy to help!

Because I’m feeling generous, I’m offering all this for only $5 – I know we all need a break in this economy, so this is my price break for you 🙂

I hope you’ll enjoy the Ring-Tailed Lemur pattern!

I’m very happy to announce that I’ll be teaching a class based on my African Violets pattern over at Crochetville in July. This is an online class, so anyone in the world can sign up for it!

If you’re a crochet beginner, or would just appreciate some extra guidance, this class may be just the thing for you! Provided you know how to make a single crochet stitch (and if you don’t, see my Crochet Basics tutorial to get that sorted out – it’s easy!), I will guide you step by step through everything you need to know to create a beautiful lifesize crocheted African Violet plant and pot. By picking from two two plant sizes, two pot sizes, and two flower patterns, you can create your own custom violets in your favorite shades.

This will be a 2-week class:

• Week 1 will cover the basics (magic ring, crocheting in the round with and without joining), plus making your soil and pot.
• Week 2 will cover making your leaves and flowers and assembling your final creation.

By the end of the classes, you’ll be armed with the skill and confidence to tackle all sorts of other crochet projects!

I’m very excited to have this opportunity to reach out and help crocheters all over the world. If you’d like to sign up to take my class, registration has just opened (although the class doesn’t begin until July 10th).

I hope to see lots of you in class!

Okay, so you know all the crochet basics, you’ve mastered the magic ring, you know how to change colours and how to join pieces together, you’re even down with the invisible decrease. What more do you need to know to create the perfect amigurumi?

It’s time for one more tutorial to join my Amigurumi Help resource: how to fasten off. I’m going to cover three different methods:

1. Closing up a piece
2. Finishing an open edge that will be joined to another piece
3. Finishing an open edge that will be visible (a neater finish)

You may think you know it all already, but #3 is another piece of magic that I bet you’ll find useful at some point in the future! Look all around the open edge on this piece – there’s no clunky join in sight:

How did I do it? Check it out here: Fastening Off tutorial.

I was just thinking, with all these crochet tutorials I’ve been writing, I almost have the makings of a book! A handy go-to techniques book. Wouldn’t that be a useful addition to your crochet library? Hmmm….

And, on a related note, if there are any more how-to topics you’d like me to cover, just let me know, and I’ll put some more tutorials together. I hope you’ve realised by now that I’m always happy to help and to share my knowledge 🙂

I have lots of little ornaments etc and nowhere to put them, so I made some basic shelves to display them. I had some wood cut at the hardware store to fit the space above my computer desk. I sanded and primed the wood:

Then I spray-painted the shelves this gorgeous greyish purple colour and mounted them on the wall with brackets:

I just threw some of my trinkets up quickly so I can see how the shelves look. In case you’re wondering, most of the little ornaments are made by me from crochet, origami, needlefelting, polymer clay, sewing, or beading. The rest are artwork, travel souvenirs, and a few other bits and pieces.

I’m really happy with how the shelves turned out – my favourite part was discovering that the wooden chickadee and flying piglet can hang from the brackets. Now I get all the fun of unearthing all my other favourite treasures and rearranging everything!

Hot on the heels of last week’s Folding Trees blogiversary, it’s now my own blogiversary (it was a total coincidence that both launched at the same time, 2 years apart).

It’s hard to believe another year has gone by so quickly! It’s now three years since I started the PlanetJune blog! Three years ago, I had never designed a crochet pattern; I thought that starting a craft blog was probably a silly idea and that nobody would ever read it – I really just started it as a record for myself of what I was making, and to push myself to keep creating things. I never dreamed it would evolve into the PlanetJune empire of today 🙂

Year in Review

Okay, let’s see the breakdown this year:

Patterns: 17 new crochet patterns in the PlanetJune store, plus 4 new free (donationware) patterns

Eyes: Added a line of animal (safety) eyes to the shop

Tutorials: New tutorials on Crochet Basics, Sizing Up (and Down) and the wonderful Invisible Decrease

Folding Trees: Started up Folding Trees with my lovely friend Eve

Book: Wrote a papercraft book, Paper Chains & Garlands (which should be out late summer or early autumn)

And of course, the biggie this year was making the decision at Christmas time to try self-employment and see what happens…

What’s Next?

I have about a million ideas for what to do in the coming year, ranging from small projects (e.g. redesign the website a bit – I think it could be a bit more user-friendly) to more ambitious ideas (e.g. my huge in-progress secret project – c’mon, you didn’t really think I’d leak my idea until it’s ready to go, did you?!).

I think my biggest challenge is going to be prioritizing and deciding which ideas to pursue and which to put on the “maybe, one day…” list. If I’m running this as a real business, I need to try to make good business decisions and balance the risks against the potential opportunities. It’s all a bit scary because of the financial side of things – much as I’d like to do whatever I want to do, creatively, I’m going to have to try to make choices that will help to support me financially.

Hey, where’s the contest?!

I do have a contest planned, but the prizes aren’t ready yet, so I’m going to hold off until they are. Watch this space…

Thank you!

I am so, so grateful to all the wonderful people who I’ve met on this journey so far… To everyone who reads my blog, who leaves a comment, e-mails me, or follows me on Twitter, thank you for your encouragement in this crazy adventure! And of course to everyone who has helped to support me by buying my patterns or sending me donations, I am more grateful than I can say.

Here’s to year 4!
June xxx

Folding Trees, the papercraft site that Eve and I co-founded, is a year old this week! It’s been a great first year; between the two of us, we’ve written over 400 posts, and published tons of paper-crafty inspiration and tutorials.

Here are a few of our most popular tutorials from the year:

clockwise from top left: 1) my Tissue Paper Carnations; 2) Eve’s Kusudama Ball (my updated tutorial here); 3) my Lucky Wishing Stars; 4) Eve’s Balloon Lights

Of course, it’s also through my work on Folding Trees that I got a book deal (yay!). My book, Paper Chains & Garlands, is at the printing stage, and should be released in late summer or early autumn – I’ll keep you posted as I hear more!

If you have any interest in crafting with paper, do check out Folding Trees for a daily dose of projects and inspiration 🙂