PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

I’d like to introduce you to a new Canadian indie yarn hand-dyer, Cheyenne Brammah of Incyanity!

Cheyenne is a long-term customer of mine and she sent me some test skeins of her hand-dyed yarn for my feedback before she launched her shop. But, as always, the following is based on my honest opinions, and I’ve been waiting for the launch so I could tell you how much I enjoyed these yarns!

Cheyenne has a great eye for colour, and choosing her palettes from her own nature photography is inspired – each shade tells a colour story, illustrated by the beautiful photos. Just look at these stunning yarn/photo combos in the lush launch colourways:

I always appreciate bringing inspiration from the natural world into my designs, and looking at these yarns together with their inspiration photos makes my heart happy.

My Experience

Incyanity yarns come in 100g hanks, and are dyed onto high quality bases (currently merino/silk, merino/nylon and merino/bamboo are available). I chose a merino/nylon (teal) and a merino/silk (purple) to test, both in fingering weight – the perfect weight for crocheted shawls!

My yarn was securely packaged and arrived in perfect condition. They looked lovely in the hanks, and even more stunning once I’d wound them into cakes. This is some seriously pretty yarn…

The tonal teal is a lovely shade. It’s just varied enough to provide some fun tonal changes while you crochet, but not so busy to distract from a beautiful stitch pattern in the finished piece.

Note: This shade is a preview of an upcoming colourway. It’s bluer than the Canyon Cascade colourway, but otherwise similar in the tonal variation.

The variegated Amethyst Sky is gorgeous in the skein and absolutely stunning after being wound. Just look at those rich purples tempered with icy blue – this colour scheme could have been designed just for me!

Note: The yarn base felt very nice to me, but Cheyenne wasn’t satisfied with the softness or sheen, and she has since found a vastly superior base for her Incyanity silk blend yarns. You can see how much more pronounced the sheen is now by comparing the same yarn in the shop with the photos of my test skein 🙂

It can be a challenge to find the right stitch pattern for a very variegated yarn in crochet, so I tested it out with this linen stitch swatch to see how the colours would play together. Very pretty! I can definitely see this as a lovely hat or cowl. But, in the end, I chose an unfussy lace stitch pattern for this skein (see my shawl below!), and I think the result is beautiful like this too.

Verdict

I really enjoyed working with both yarns. They felt soft and bouncy, they didn’t split at all while crocheting, the yarn colours didn’t fade at all after soaking (a very important test!), and both blocked out beautifully.

And I think the results speak for themselves – the two shawls I made from my yarn are just gorgeous in these rich colours:

Left: Diamond Lace Wrap; Right: Sweetheart Lace Shawl

If you’re looking for a high-quality, stunningly-coloured, nature-inspired hand-dyed yarn to elevate your next crochet or knit project, I recommend you check out Incyanity 🙂

I recently started using a facial toner, and suddenly I was throwing out more cotton pads in a week than I usually use in a year! I try to minimise the amount of trash I generate, and, as the bathroom bin started to fill, I decided this had to stop. Enter my new free crochet pattern: washable, re-useable Eco-Friendly Cosmetic Rounds.

Use these washable rounds anywhere you’d use a disposable cotton round or facial wipe – for cleansing, toning, or removing makeup – and save money while helping the environment! They crochet up in minutes, take very little yarn, and make a pretty and practical gift.

Eco-Friendly Cosmetic Rounds are easy to clean – simply toss the used pads into a mesh laundry bag or a drawstring bag and run them through your washer and dryer with your laundry.

As I like to reward people who choose to donate for my donationware patterns, the PDF version of the Eco-Friendly Cosmetic Rounds pattern also includes the bonus pattern for the Mini size (pictured above; I find this size is perfect for applying my toner!) and additional instructional photos and tips, including left-handed photos. As always, the pattern for the Standard size is free for you to use, and you need only donate if you’d like to thank me for my time in creating it, or if you’d like the easy-to-print PDF version with the bonuses.

Go to the free Eco-Friendly Cosmetic Rounds pattern >>

Or jump straight to donate:

Order the Eco-Friendly Cosmetic Rounds pattern >>

Not ready to make them yet? Add this pattern to your Ravelry queue:

I hope you’ll find this pattern useful! And every step we can make towards helping the environment by reducing waste is a step in the right direction, no matter how small.

My next few crochet video tutorials will be in response to customer requests. If there are other crochet techniques you’d like me to cover in future videos, please leave a comment below, or email me (june@planetjune.com) with your suggestions!

If you’ve ever lost your place while crocheting in a spiral, or discovered that you must have made a mistake many rounds earlier, I highly recommend you use a stitch marker to mark the start of every round while you crochet your amigurumi! But how do you go about doing that? How does it help you avoid mistakes, and what do you do if you realise you’ve made one?

Or, if your pattern directs you to mark a specific stitch while you crochet, how exactly do you do that?

In my latest video, I’ll walk you through everything you need to know about using a stitch marker with amigurumi (or any other crochet worked in a continuous spiral), including:

• How to mark the first stitch of the round
• How to fix a mistake
• How to mark a specific stitch

As always, the video is available in right-handed and left-handed versions.

This video is ideal for amigurumi beginners, but I recommend you watch it even if you’ve been making amigurumi for years – you may still pick up a tip or two!

Go to the Using Stitch Markers in Amigurumi video tutorial >>

Hand and wrist pain is a common story for crocheters, knitters, and other crafters who spend a lot of time making repetitive motions with their hands.

If you visit the doctor, you may be told you have carpal tunnel syndrome, tendinitis, arthritis, an RSI (repetitive strain injury), and that may be the case… or it may not.

Before you consider serious medical treatments like steroid injections or surgery to help with your hand pain, I’d suggest you read my story below, and see if you can fix yourself without the need for drugs or surgical interventions.

Disclaimer: I’m not a medical professional, and if your doctor has diagnosed you with a condition, their recommended treatment may be the right solution for you. But I’d recommend you try this simple self-administered pressure treatment first – it can’t make things any worse, it’s fast and free, and it may relieve you of serious pain!

My Story

In 2007, I was mis-diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome.

The pain was debilitating. I could no longer perform everyday tasks without agonizing pain: turning a door handle; pushing open a door with my palm; using a computer mouse; operating a can opener…

I was referred to a specialist, given a fancy wrist brace to lock my wrist straight, and told that if that didn’t fix the problem, my only other options were steroid injections or carpal tunnel surgery.

I wore the wrist brace for months, and learned to mouse left-handed. The brace helped with the pain, but the problem didn’t go away.

Eventually, I found a cure that was ridiculously simple, I could perform on myself at no cost, and has completely fixed the problem.

None of the doctors I visited considered this as a possibility.

The cause of all my debilitating wrist pain was a knotted muscle near my elbow.

Myofascial Pain Syndrome, Trigger Points & Referred Pain

When you overuse a muscle, it can cause sensitive areas of tight fibres to form, creating a knot in the muscle. The point where the knot forms is called a trigger point, and pressing on it causes an achy pain.

Now, here’s the crazy part: the muscle knot at the trigger point can cause serious pain in a different part of your body. This is called referred pain.

So the pain you feel may be caused by a trigger point elsewhere. No matter how much you treat your hand or wrist, you won’t be able to fix the problem if the pain, like mine, is caused by a trigger point in your upper forearm!

Treat Yourself

Once you know where the trigger point is that’s causing your pain, you can ‘unlock’ it – and stop the referred pain – by releasing the muscle knot yourself.

I learnt this ischemic pressure technique by watching a video from Dr Jonathan Kuttner, an expert in chronic muscle and joint pain. He has a couple of quick videos that explain the process – I highly recommend you watch them:

• Trigger Point Treatment
• Switch Off Myofascial Trigger Points Gently and Effectively

The process is the same to ‘turn off’ any trigger point. The key is to start with low enough pressure on the trigger point so it doesn’t hurt, then to gradually increase the pressure, but never to the level where it hurts.

(From experience, I can tell you that, if you’re too forceful, you’ll end up feeling like you’ve bruised yourself, and you don’t do any good. Slow and gentle is the way to go.)

My Treatment

Coincidentally, the trigger point Jonathan demonstrates ‘turning off’ in his video is the same one that caused my carpal tunnel-like symptoms and wrist/hand pain, so I could follow the instructions in his video exactly.

I’ve never been able to feel the nodule of knotted muscle he describes, but I know I’m in the right place when I feel the tender spot on my arm.

In 2009, when my condition was agonising, I could press the trigger point in my arm and immediately feel the referred pain in the back of my hand and wrist! That’s what convinced me that this was a) a real phenomenon and b) the cause of my problems.

Here’s me from an email I sent in 2009 when I’d just cured myself of my supposed ‘carpal tunnel syndrome’:

The myofascial thing is amazing – my wrist was so painful I couldn’t put any pressure on it while it was at all bent, so I couldn’t even open a door or a jar without it being agonisingly painful. I got one of those wrist splint things and it helped me to avoid the pain but it didn’t get better. And then I was googling and found this AMAZING thing – basically it was a referred pain caused by a muscle knot just below my elbow. And by doing gentle acupressure [sic] with my finger on this point, I healed it! I know it sounds like rubbish, but it’s totally true – when I pushed this exact spot on my arm, I could feel the pain in my wrist, even though I wasn’t doing anything to my wrist. Total magic.

Since then, I’ve rarely had the pain escalate to the terrible point it was at. I always treat it as soon as I realise what’s happening, and the knot has never had a chance to form as badly as it was back then.

I’ve developed the same problem in the other arm too, and now I can always find the trigger point on each arm – I feel a tender ache when I press on them. I try to do the ischemic pressure treatment whenever I remember, to stop the knot from forming in the first place. This works really well for me!

Finding Other Trigger Points

There are trigger points all over the body, and you can consult a trigger point diagram (like this one) that shows the position of the trigger point (marked with an X) and the possible locations of referred pain for that point (shown as a cloud of red). You can use those to help diagnose if any of your unexplained chronic pains may be caused by trigger points, and try to deactivate them if so.

I’ve had several other problems with pain that have also turned out to be trigger point related:

• I get pain at the base of my thumbs when I crochet (or use my phone) too much, and I’ve discovered that there are two trigger points in the thumb. Treating the lower trigger point at the base of the thumb seems to help me.
• I also occasionally get terrible upper back pain. When I have it, I can never get comfortable and I can’t sleep for the pain. The back pain turned out to be caused by trigger points, and now when my upper back and shoulders are hurting, I can usually fix it by unlocking the trigger points in my levator scapulae or trapezius muscles. (Here’s Jonathan’s article Trigger Points for Neck Pain).

Give It a Go

I have no idea how many people with hand pains from crochet or other crafts may also actually be suffering from a simple trigger point caused by a knotted muscle in their forearm, but please do try some trigger point pressure therapy and report back here if it helps!

A couple of tips on what to expect:

• If your pain is bad, I’ve found that it may take daily sessions over a week or two to completely turn off the trigger point, but you should be able to feel an improvement immediately.
• Your trigger points will probably reactivate in time, but knowing where they are and how to treat them means you can fix yourself in future before the stage of agonising pain, limited function and sleepless nights.

I hope this works for you as well as it has for me.

Here’s to more crafting, with less pain! 🙂

My patriotic Beaver just can’t wait until Canada Day (July 1st) to start his celebrations!

I’ve just updated my Maple Leaf Collection crochet pattern to also include instructions for making this small thread Canadian Flag too – it’s perfect for an amigurumi to hold.

If you’ve already bought the Maple Leaf Collection, log back into your PlanetJune account, go to your old order for the Maple Leaf Collection and re-download the Canadian Flag Background PDF – you’ll see a new page at the end with the updated details for the thread flag!

Canadiana crochet patterns

I have a small, but growing, collection of Canadian-themed patterns now – the adorable Beaver, and the Maple Leaf Collection (which includes the Canadian Flag background):

Find all my Canadiana crochet patterns here!

Are there any other Canadian icons you’d like me to add to my Canadiana pattern collection? Let me know in the comments!

I have a very special new design for you today – it’s a beautifully-shaped Seahorse crochet pattern:

Aren’t they sweet? I’m so pleased with how they turned out 🙂

Seahorse Fun Facts

• Seahorses are a very unusual-looking type of fish.
• They live in sheltered areas of warm seas across the world.
• Seahorses swim upright, using their dorsal fin (at the back) to move them forwards and their pectoral fins (at either side of the head) for steering.
• They are slow, weak swimmers, so they use their prehensile tails to grasp onto seaweed, coral, etc so they don’t drift away in the currents.
• Unlike most animals, the male seahorse cares for the babies. The eggs are kept safely in a special brood pouch on his stomach until they are ready to emerge as fully-formed miniature seahorses!

About the Design

My seahorse design is realistically shaped and about 9″ (22.5cm) long when worked in worsted weight yarn.

It’s an elegant low-sew design, as the entire head, body and tail are crocheted as one piece. The only sewing is to attach the fins and coronet.

I made my samples in Lion Brand Vanna’s Choice worsted weight yarn in realistic seahorsey shades, but you have lots of scope for creativity in your yarn choice!

• Multicoloured or variegated yarns would work well.
• Glossy or sparkly yarns would add a magical touch.
• Scale it down with finer yarn and a smaller hook for a cute miniature seahorse.
• Make a giant cuddly seahorse using my Giant Amigurumi techniques!

About the Pattern

As always, the pattern includes full instructions and detailed step-by-step photographs for assembly and all special techniques used, so you can follow along and make a perfect seahorse.

I’ve also included stitch diagrams in addition to written instructions for all the fins and coronet, so you can use whichever instructions work best for your learning style.

You’ll love the way it magically comes together…

Buy Now & Launch Discount

Ready to get started? Pick up my Seahorse crochet pattern from my shop right now. Or, if you’re not ready to make it just yet, add it to your Ravelry queue or favourites so you don’t forget about it:

And for one week only, you can take an extra 50c off the price: add the Seahorse pattern to your shopping cart, and enter the discount code MAGIC at checkout! (Offer ends Thursday 6 June, 2019.)

I feel that there’s something almost magical about these special creatures – don’t you agree? And their beautiful elegant shape lends itself so well to a sculptural design like this.

I really hope you’ll enjoy my Seahorse pattern. Don’t forget to share photos with me when you’ve made one:

• Post in the PlanetJune Ravelry group
• Tag me (@PlanetJune) on any social media
• Email me a pic to june@planetjune.com

…I always love to hear from you, and to see what you’ve been making from my patterns. 🙂

The standard way to finish an open-ended piece in amigurumi is to join with a slip stitch (sl st) to the next stitch, to reduce the height jog of the spiral between the first and last stitches of the final round. It’s a quick and easy method, and is perfectly fine if you’ll be stitching the piece down to something else so the edge won’t show in the finished amigurumi.

That’s not always the case, though – sometimes the edge will be visible in the finished piece, and in this case the sl st finish isn’t the best choice – it leaves a little bump that’s impossible to hide completely.

When I decided to make a video tutorial to show the most invisible finish for an open edge in amigurumi, I realised that, while there’s a standard method for amigurumi worked in joined rounds (and this actually forms the basis of my Perfect Stripes Invisible Join), there’s no consensus for amigurumi worked in spirals…

And you know what that means: it’s time for another crochet investigation!

Method

All my candidates are based on the standard invisible finish for joined rounds, but I considered two ways that the method can be varied that may affect the look of the finished edge:

1. Should there be a slip stitch before the join, or not? A slip stitch would reduce the height difference before the join, but might end up more visible than without.
2. Should there be a duplicated stitch, or an additional stitch added? The additional stitch was my original preferred method from 2009 (there’s no need to maintain the stitch count if the edge won’t be worked back into, so the duplicate stitch isn’t necessary) but is that a good reason to keep doing it? (Of course not – not if there’s a better way…)

So that gives us four candidates for the experiment:

C: no slip stitch, join in next stitch
D: no slip stitch, duplicate stitch join
E: slip stitch, join in next stitch
F: slip stitch, duplicate stitch join

The photos below show the results of each test, together with:

A: the piece after the final stitch is worked, before any join (note the difference in height between the final stitch, below the hook, and the next stitch to its right)
B: slip stitch join (the yarn tail isn’t woven in here, but you can clearly see the knot just below the tail that can’t be completely hidden)

Results

I compared the 4 samples and noted my observations (don’t worry if you can’t see all these in the photos above; they are much more apparent when viewed from multiple angles):

C: height jog very visible; stitch count not maintained
D: height jog minimised; skipped stitch visible from front; stitch count is maintained
E: height jog minimised; sl st visible from front; stitch count not maintained
F: height jog minimised; sl st and skipped stitch visible from front; stitch count is maintained

C is an immediate fail: you can clearly see that it does the worst job of blending the height difference between the start and end of the final round.

F is the next to go: there’s an extra bar visible beneath the V from either a slipped stitch or a skipped stitch, and F has both while D and E only have one each, so it’s the worst in terms of invisibility, with extra bars visible beneath two stitches.

That leaves D and E. They’re both pretty good in terms of invisibility, but I’m going to award the prize to D: the fact that it maintains the stitch count around the edge makes it the most versatile; you can use it for an open-ended piece or one that will be stitched to something else with no problems, so this means you’ll have one fewer technique to remember!

Refining the Technique

While working on the test, I also noted that the downside of any of these methods is that you have to pull the duplicate stitch very carefully to the right size to make it look truly invisible, which makes it more difficult to then weave in the yarn tail without disturbing the size. So, I came up with a tiny refinement that makes it much easier to control the size of the duplicate stitch and keep it held in place once you’ve adjusted it to the right size.

Intrigued? Good! I’ll explain all in my new Invisible Finish video tutorial 😉

Continue to the Invisible Finish for Open Edges in Amigurumi video tutorial >>

Way back in February, I announced on Twitter that I was going to make a Giant Dinosaur:

Giant Dino is happening! It should be around 3ft long ?
Ingredients:
1. A dino pattern from my Dinosaurs Set 1 (I'll leave which as a surprise!)
2. Techniques from my Complete Guide to Giant Amigurumi

Result and pics to follow… pic.twitter.com/Jaxk8lnp2M

— June Gilbank (@PlanetJune) February 7, 2019

And now it’s time for the big reveal!

Georgette the Giant Purple Triceratops is 36 inches (over 90cm!) long, weighs 1.9lbs (850g) and is impossibly soft and cuddly.

I made her using my Triceratops pattern from Dinosaurs Set 1 and the techniques from my Complete Guide to Giant Amigurumi.

Isn’t she huge?!

Although she turned out beautifully, I did have a few hitches along the way…

Yarn

I was excited to find a new (to me) yarn to try for this project: Bernat Blanket Extra. According to my calculations, one strand of Extra would be the equivalent of the two strands of Bernat Blanket I use for most of my giant ami, so it seemed like the perfect yarn for Giant Amigurumi! In the picture below, it’s the purple yarn second from the top:

Pictured top to bottom:

While I was correct that a single strand of Extra is an ideal yarn for Giant Amigurumi, I made a bit of a miscalculation and used the weight instead of the yardage when I was figuring out how much yarn I’d need (using the calculation method from the book). Converting from 2 strands of Blanket to 1 strand of Extra, the yardage is a straight 2:1 conversion, but the weight isn’t quite the same (as the Extra weighs just a little more per yard than 2 strands of Blanket).

Thanks to that mistake, I didn’t buy quite enough yarn for the Giant Stegosaurus I had planned 🙁 , but I ran the numbers and realised I had enough to make a Giant Triceratops instead – problem solved!

Structure

Giant ami aren’t as rigid as standard amigurumi, and, even though they are light for their size, the weight of Georgette’s head, including the horns and frill, was a bit much for her front legs – they were squashed down a little, which made her chin touch the ground. So I added an extra round to her front legs to offset that ‘squish factor’, which worked out fine 🙂

Other than that, I followed the pattern, together with my book’s technique advice, exactly:

• The secure magic ring was a lifesaver, especially for those giant horns!
• It turns out that a giant triceratops frill is very floppy, but the stiffening flat pieces technique sorted that right out.
• The large size crocheted eyes were the perfect finishing touch.

Awww, don’t they look just like a mama triceratops and newly-hatched baby?

Georgette is exactly 4 times the length of the standard Triceratops, and 15 times the weight! But she’s extremely cute and cuddly – yay for non-scary dinosaurs 😀

Make Your Own!

If you’re inspired to try crocheting a giant dinosaur too, here’s what you’ll need:

• The PlanetJune Triceratops crochet pattern, or another dinosaur pattern
• The Complete Guide to Giant Amigurumi ebook for all the special sizing-up techniques

Of course Giant Amigurumi isn’t limited to just dinosaurs (although I’m still tempted to buy more yarn to make a giant stegosaurus!) – see the book for lots of other examples, and advice for which amigurumi patterns will be easiest to scale up to giant size.

Please share photos of your giant amigurumi projects on any social media using the #giantamigurumi hashtag, and tag me @planetjune so I can see what you’re making! And if you’re a member of the PlanetJune Ravelry group, you can also share your giant amis in our ongoing Giant Amigurumi CAL 🙂

I’m still smitten with Giant Amigurumi – they’re just so much fun, don’t you think? Who could resist a giant purple triceratops?!