PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

Wow. What a response! Thank you all for your comments – it means so much to me that you like my most personal work to date 🙂

Okay, so now you’ve seen the finished product, but I think I need to share a little of the insane amount of effort that went into making my orang utan! I would guess we’re looking at about 100 hours of June time, of which the actual crocheting that you see is less than half of that. Aside from that, highlights include:

• sculpting the hands and feet from pipe cleaners
• snapping and unsnapping armature parts to get the skeleton proportions right (literally hours of struggle, one pinched fingertip and one hugely bruised knuckle to show for that)
• sewing cushioned sleeves to cushion the skeleton and keep them in the right place inside the body
• the previous 2 heads that went wrong wrong wrong
• creating a wire base for the head so it wouldn’t sag

Here’s a glimpse into a little bit of the work that you don’t see in the finished orang:

left: pipe cleaners formed into shape of hand
middle: beginning to crochet over the form
right: finished hand with arm attached

left: a finished arm and leg
middle: the spine (this is the plastic segmented poseable armature I used)
right: quilted covers for the armature limbs so he wouldn’t feel too bony

I didn’t take any pics of the inside of the body or head, but that should give you an idea – there’s more than meets the eye to this little guy! But the result is that he is infinitely poseable and feels very realistic, thanks to the weight of the armature and the ‘backbone’ bumps you can just feel when you stroke him.

I’m so flattered that some of you would like a pattern, but, as you can see from the above, this wouldn’t be a crochet pattern – it would be ‘how to make a plush art sculpture (oh yeah, and you’ll need to crochet too)’. And that’s one reason why my orang utan is art, not craft – it’s not something that can be reproduced. So definitely no pattern (sorry!).

But there may be a way you can own a little piece of him, even though you can never make/buy an original: I’m thinking of selling high quality prints of a really good photograph of him. I tweeted the idea yesterday and had some good responses – I still need to investigate the logistics but I think it would be doable.

So now I’d like to ask you: would you buy a print if they were for sale? Would you prefer something more ‘useful’ like a blank notecard or postcard, or an art print that you could frame? Or something else again – I’m open to all ideas. If there’s enough interest I’ll get some printed and put them in the shop.

You probably all know the story by now: I’ve had a pet project for the past year – to crochet a life-size realistic baby orang utan as a freeform art project (no pattern!). It’s been a long time coming, but I have finally finished him!

I have a lot of detail I could share, but I think I’ll save that for another time, and let the pics speak for themselves today. Please, please leave me comments! This is the most important (to me) piece I’ve ever made and I really really want to know what you think of him…

And finally, with a wink to the fellow Pratchett fans: OOK!

For some reason I am very nervous about showing him to you – I feel like my soul is on display! I hope you can tell that I have poured my heart into him. Please let me know what you think in the comments…

Thank you all so much for participating in my survey! I had over 100 responses, and every design was voted in both first and last place at least once, which makes it a little difficult to interpret the results… The clear winner, with over 40% first place votes, is the Discworld. After that, the results are a bit ambiguous. But what was even more useful than the numbers is the comments that over half of you included to tell me why you voted the way you did!

For instance, you (mostly) love the Discworld. But it also got a fair few last place votes, with reasons like:

• Not a PlanetJune original concept
• Most people won’t understand the Pratchett reference
• Background too dark
• Perceived complexity may put people off

And for the monkeys, the pros include:

• Natural setting
• Realistic
• Eye-catching vertical format

And the cons:

• Too busy for a small card
• Background too distracting
• Text doesn’t stand out

See how useful these comments are? I can see that the Guinea Pigs card is probably a better design than the Monkeys, as it shares most of the pros of the Monkeys comments, but avoids the cons. Your comments will also be really useful when I’m trying to take future product photos, to give me ideas of pitfalls to avoid falling into.

The reason I wanted to make 3 different cards is so that there’d be something for everyone. But, when I came to order the cards, I discovered that the prices were more than I was expecting – e.g. an extra $11.50 per design just to print the text on the back… Given that, and the survey responses, I’ve decided to just get the Discworld and Guinea Pigs cards printed. It’ll be interesting to see which is the most popular at the show! 58% of you chose one of these two designs as their first choice, and 88% chose one of them as either their first or second choice, so I’m hoping that almost everyone will like at least one of them!

Here’s the back of the cards

Now for the draw. 82% of the respondents opted into the draw, and the winner is: Johanna Jennings! Congratulations, Johanna! (I will contact you directly to ask for your mailing address, and I’ll throw in some bonus postcards as you’re only getting 2 cards in your prize instead of the promised 3).

Thanks again to all who entered. If you have any other comments, suggestions or feedback about any aspect of PlanetJune, please feel free to e-mail me at any time – all advice gratefully received!

I just realised there’s only a week and a half to go until Easter! If you’re still looking for some ideas for things to make for Easter, how about crocheting some PlanetJune designs? I thought I’d save you some time and look through my own catalogue to see what Easter-y patterns I have:

New for 2009:

PocketAmi Easter

Oldies but goodies:

Fuzzy Bunny & Chick

Fuzzy Lamb

And don’t forget my free patterns:

Daffodils

Have a PlanetJune Easter this year, with all the sweetness of a chocolate egg, but much better for you 🙂

I’ve been thinking about what kind of promotional items I can give away at next month’s Creativ Festival. I was debating buying some Moo cards, but they are so small I’m not sure that my photos would be clear enough. So, I thought I would get my own business card-sized Moo-type cards printed. I hope that they will be cute enough for people to want to keep them and not throw them away as soon as they get home!

I’ve made 5 designs and I’d like to get 3 of them printed. Could you help me choose between the 5 designs below? I’ll draw a random entrant from my survey who will win a set of the 3 winning choices! (One entry per person, please, and I’ll draw the winner on Sunday April 5th at 6pm EST)

Thank you! Click through to the one-question survey.

Hi guys, I’m back from the UK – did you miss me? If you want to keep up with more of my day-to-day life (both crafty and more personal), you can follow me on Twitter. Send me a direct message if you do, so I know who you are and can follow you back!

Now I’m back home, I can show you the little presents I made for my parents. For Mum (a pianist) a music-inspired needlebook with blue (her favourite colour) felt pages:

And for Dad (always hard to buy for), a set of marble magnets featuring pics of his dog (they look better in person; the glass was tricky to photograph without reflections):

While I was sorting through all my old stuff at my Dad’s house, I found a bag containing 4 skeins of beautifully soft kid mohair yarn, in this pretty purple shade. I’m absolutely at a loss as to how I acquired this – I didn’t even crochet while I lived in the UK! Anyway, I’m not complaining – free yarn is always a good thing, especially when it’s quality yarn like this:

I whiled away my hours on the plane by crocheting fuzzy orange tubes to be the legs for my orang utan. Just the body and feet to go now…

I managed to bring back my mammoth Animal reference book in my carry-on backpack (and I have a bruise on my tailbone to prove it – the book is seriously large and weighs over 5kg!) – no worries that I will run out of animal inspiration now I have over 600 beautifully-photographed pages to pore through!

I also brought back some gardening books, as inspiration for some new plant designs. I have a lovely idea for a new plant-themed series of patterns, but I don’t want to jinx it by revealing it just yet…

And I’m expecting to see the initial layouts for my papercraft book this week – so exciting! I’ll post some pics when it’s all been finalised.

Now, time to get back to work! I’ll post again when I have something new to show you, and in the meantime you can see me on Twitter, or check out my latest tweets in the little widget in the right sidebar –>

I thought I’d try writing a different kind of post today: an insight into my design process, and what happens when things don’t work out as planned.

Remember this picture? This is the orang utan I started crocheting at last spring’s Creativ Festival. My goal was to make a life-sized, realistic baby orang. After the show, I finished both arms and then moved onto the head, and that’s where things started to go wrong…

My first attempt looked like a silly smiling cartoon monkey. My second attempt was much more realistic, but hideously ugly. The more I tried to fix them, the less confidence I had that I would ever be able to complete my orang. Maybe it’s because it was so important to me – I love all the animals that inspire my designs, but the orang utan is one of my all-time favourites. When I conceived this project, I wanted to make something really special just for me – not a simple replicable design, but a real one-of-a-kind art piece.

There didn’t seem to be any point in making the body or legs for my orang project when it didn’t seem like there would ever be a head to go with it, so the pieces have sat in a zip-lock bag in my ‘in progress’ drawer for months, untouched. I often thought about the project, but couldn’t see any way forward.

Yesterday, I went back to basics. I sat down with a sketch book and a dozen reference photos of baby orangs, and spent an hour drawing, redrawing, refining. Looking for the ‘essence of orang utan’ that I had failed to capture to date, instead of thinking of it as a crochet problem. I think I have it: my final sketch crystallized what I needed to do, and then it was almost an afterthought to crochet and sculpt the head. (I won’t share any pics yet… I want it to have a big reveal, after all the work that has gone into this!)

At the Creativ Festival this spring (April 24-26, in Mississauga Ontario), I’ll be giving a talk about my work, called Who’s Who in the Crochet Zoo. Now I’m confident that I will be able to bring my orang utan along – nicely circular when you consider where the project was ‘born’, exactly one year earlier.

Thank you all for the book congratulations! I’m sorry I didn’t have any real photos of it to share – the book is still in layout, so there’s nothing finished to show you yet. But soon, I promise!

Now, back to the crochet patterns. To make up (I hope) for my absence, I have two new patterns to release today: the Alpaca, and a fun new set of PocketAmi for Easter. I don’t have a name for the new ‘natural fibre’ range of patterns yet (ideas, anyone?), but I didn’t want to make you wait, so for now you’ll be able to find the Alpaca pattern filed under Misc Patterns in the shop. Or just click through from this post to make your life easier!

A little info about the new designs:

Alpaca

If you’d like to make an alpaca or llama of your own, you don’t have to find 100% alpaca yarn to do so! I designed this pattern to work with any worsted weight yarn, but, like all my patterns, it’s pretty flexible. The larger alpaca above uses Bernat Satin, which is 100% acrylic – it doesn’t get less natural than that.

In fact, the alpaca yarn I bought was so fine (2-ply – I think that’s fingering weight?) that even after doubling the yarn, it was still significantly finer than the Bernat Satin – I’d say a sport-weight equivalent. But, as you can see, the pattern looks just as good in either size. If you substitute a different yarn weight, be sure to choose an appropriate hook size so you can form your stitches easily, but the stuffing doesn’t show through the finished piece. (Just ask if you have any questions about yarn choices.)

PocketAmi Easter

PocketAmi Easter is another seasonal set, comprising a baby duckling, bunny and chick. They provide all the sweetness you could want from an Easter gift, with none of the calories! If you don’t celebrate Easter, these would be a great way to herald the coming spring (I’m sure it’ll be here soon, won’t it?) or would make a really sweet baby mobile for any time of year. And they work up in no time too, which is always a bonus!

Both patterns are now available to purchase from the PlanetJune store (look at the New Products for March box on the homepage for easy access to my latest designs).