PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

Yesterday, I took the opportunity to learn more about photography and plants at a photowalk workshop hosted by Colour Paradise Greenhouses and taught by local photographer Abbi Longmire. It was a great pairing – Abbi encouraged us to experiment with our cameras, and the greenhouse offered beautiful and varied subjects to photograph (and maybe some ideas for future PlanetJune plant designs…)

I used the manual (M) setting on my camera for the first time ever(!) and, after a shaky start, ended up with some half-decent shots. I thought I’d share my favourites with you – bear in mind that composition etc is not my strong suit and I’m very much a beginner at this type of photography!

(These are unprocessed, out-of-the-camera shots – all I did was resize them to blog size.)

Not too bad, are they? 🙂

Thanks to Abbi and Colour Paradise for the inspirational afternoon! I hope I’ll be able to bring what I learnt into my nature photography, and maybe even my pattern photos…

Since leaving the warmth of Africa for the Great White North, one thing I really miss is being able to see lizards all the time – both when out exploring nature, and in my own garden. I grew to love lizards after observing them in the wild for so long, and I’m considering getting a pet bearded dragon one day.

Until then, I now have the next best thing with my new addition to my amigurumi menagerie – a life-sized Bearded Dragon crochet pattern:

She’s such a cutie!

Bearded Dragon Fun Facts

• Bearded dragons, aka ‘beardies’, are one of the most popular reptiles to keep as pets.
• These lizards are docile and friendly, and eat insects and vegetables.
• In the wild, bearded dragons can be found in the Australian deserts.
• Beardies can flatten their bodies and change colour when they bask in the sun, so they can absorb more heat.
• When threatened, they puff out their spiky ‘beard’ throat skin and open their mouth wide so they appear larger.

About the Design

My bearded dragon is roughly life-sized and realistically shaped, at about 12″ (30cm) long. It has an alert stance, a wide body and wedge-shaped head, and tiny spines along the sides of its head and body, just like a real beardy!

I made my sample in a heathered yarn (Lion Brand Heartland) which adds a subtle variegated effect which I love, but you can use a solid colour of yarn instead if you prefer. Fancy bearded dragons come in a wide range of colours (orange, yellow, brown, grey, and even red or white) so you have lots of scope for making life-like beardies in all sorts of colours.

About the Pattern

As with my other lizard patterns, the realistic legs are wired with pipe cleaners, but the pattern also includes tips for omitting the pipe cleaners if you want your beardy to be baby-safe.

The pattern includes stitch diagrams for the spines in addition to the written instructions, so you can use whichever instructions work best for your learning style.

And, as always, close-up photos aid with every step of the assembly, so you can be confident you’ll be able to make a perfect bearded dragon too.

Buy Now & Launch Discount

Ready to get started? Pick up my Bearded Dragon 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 Bearded Dragon pattern to your shopping cart, and enter the discount code BEARDY at checkout! (Offer ends Wednesday 8 May, 2019.)

This bearded dragon design has been over a year in the making, but I’m really happy with the end result – I think I got the alert beardy pose just right, and the tiny spines don’t overwhelm the design, even in worsted weight yarn.

I hope you agree, and that you’ll enjoy my Bearded Dragon pattern 🙂

PlanetJune Herps

With this new pattern, my herp (reptiles and amphibians) pattern collection is now up to 10 designs: 5 lizards, 3 turtles and 2 frogs! You can find all the PlanetJune reptile and amphibian crochet patterns here 🙂

Do you have any other herp pattern requests? Let me know in the comments!

I’ve updated my How to Crochet in the Back Bumps of a Chain article with a brand new video tutorial! Now you can see exactly how it’s done, with my helpful highlighted stitches to guide you.

In the video, I’ll also show you my tips to make sure you’re starting from the back bump of the correct stitch (something that confused me for a long time!)

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

Why would you want to crochet in the back bumps of a chain? Not only to make a neat, non-loopy edge at the bottom of a rectangular piece like a scarf or blanket, but also to make small details for amigurumi, appliques, etc.

You’ll see back bumps details in a lot of my patterns, for example Cephalopod tentacles, Snow Star snowflakes, Iguana toes and spikes, Maple Leaves 🙂

I hope you’ll find this new video tutorial helpful! (And please let me know if you have any video requests for me to demystify any other techniques I use in my patterns!)

Go to the video tutorial >>

Here’s a new addition to my stemmed flower patterns: a beautiful realistic tulip flower with a clever one-piece construction. You’ll love how it comes together!

Don’t they look gloriously spring-like in their distinctive tulip colours? (I had so much fun picking the colours for these!)

I’ve also completed a new video (the first of many!) using my new audio/video equipment to accompany this pattern, and all my other stemmed flowers: Easy Yarn-Wrapped Stems for Crochet Flowers. As always, my videos are available in right- and left-handed versions, so you can see exactly what to do.

I hope you can see/hear the quality improvement in this new video, but if you don’t even notice because you’re concentrating on the content, that’s fine too. Clear, close-up and well explained techniques are always my top priority. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel so you’ll always see my latest videos – I have lots more in store!

Here are all my stemmed flowers together: Basic Rose, Daffodils, Carnations and the new Tulips. I hope they all brighten your day!

As I like to reward people who chose to donate for my donationware patterns, the PDF version of the Tulips pattern includes additional assembly photos (including left-handed photos) and my special technique for fastening off the yarn neatly at the base of the stem. As always, the pattern 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.

Go to the free Tulips pattern >>

Or jump straight to donate:

Order the Tulips pattern >>

Not ready to make it yet? Add it to your Ravelry queue:

For the past year or so, I’ve been working on a collaboration with my mum, Lilian Linden, who is an acclaimed Scottish music pianist and the founder of the Invercauld Scottish Dance band.

For three decades, Mum has been composing original music ranging from lively jigs and reels to traditional strathspeys and lyrical slow airs, and now we’ve collected them all for the first time in her own music book, The Lilian Linden Collection of Scottish Music!

From learning how to use professional quality music notation software to create the sheet music (mostly Mum’s side of the collaboration), through designing, editing, laying out and publishing the book (mostly my contribution), via endless international Skype calls to progress the project, publishing this book has been a new challenge for both of us, but we’re delighted with the result.

Doesn’t it look good?

When I visited my parents last week, Mum and I had a final check of the proof copy to make sure it was 100% perfect, and now it’s up on amazon and available to purchase worldwide!

Amazon links: US, UK, CA, DE – and you can also find it on all the other Amazon international sites by searching for “Lilian Linden”. 🙂

If you know anyone who enjoys playing Scottish or Celtic music or who plays for Scottish dancing or ceilidhs, please let them know about this book. It includes 33 original tunes with chords, and is intended to be played primarily on piano, accordion and/or fiddle.

I’m so proud of Mum for all the work she’s put into this project and for finally getting all her original music published in print form. Please leave my mum (Lilian) a comment to congratulate her on this huge achievement!

I’m visiting my parents in the UK this week, and I decided to make a quick travel pillow for the flights. I’d looked into buying a travel pillow, but they all seemed far too bulky. All I want is something to support my head as I attempt to sleep on the plane. Here’s what I came up with:

It’s not just cute (hello, kitty!) but it also has a special feature that I came up with myself. Although I may not be the only person to think of this idea, I haven’t seen a pillow like it before, so I should explain how it works.

When you rest your head on it, the pillow creases in the middle to cup your head gently:

And you can also fold it in half to make a wedge shape. Rest the fold on your shoulder against your neck, and you can sleep with your head resting on your shoulder while your neck remains at a fairly comfortable angle:

Here’s how the magic works: the pillow has two compartments, separated by a simple seam down the middle:

(I stitched the central seam first, then stuffed each compartment separately.)

The seam forms a natural fold line in the pillow, without compressing the stuffing when you fold it:

It’s very compact, which makes it easy to pack. Flat, it measures 9 x 6.5″ (23 x 16cm):

And folded in half, it’s only 6.5 x 4.5″ (16 x 11cm):

This pillow is 100% recycled: the washable, removable cover fabric comes from a pair of Hello Kitty lounge pants that developed a hole, the pillow inner is fabric from an old cushion, and the stuffing is leftover from another pillow that was too thick for me, so I removed some of the stuffing. Total cost: $0 (the best price…)

In practice, the incredibly uncomfortable seat on my plane meant I had to use it, flat, as lumbar support behind my back for the majority of the flight – I should have made two of them! But now I know it works as a behind-head pillow, a neck support pillow and a lumbar support pillow, so it’s even more useful. 🙂

You might think I’d be running out of animal ideas to recreate in crochet, but there are lots of really obvious choices that I haven’t had a chance to make yet. Case in point: the national animal of Canada – how could I have not designed a beaver pattern yet?! Well, let’s rectify that right now…

When I stopped my pattern commissions program, the beaver was almost fully pledged, so I’m really happy to have finally had the chance to fulfill the wish of those would-be commissioners (and other Canadians, nature lovers, people who just like cute amigurumi animals…) with my PlanetJune Beaver crochet pattern! (And – bonus for the commissioners – now you don’t have to pay the full cost of your pledge, just the regular pattern price!)

Beaver Fun Facts

• The beaver is the largest rodent in North America. It lives in ponds and lakes and on riverbanks.
• Beavers can see underwater as well as they can on land, and can close their ears and nostrils when swimming. They swim using their webbed back feet as paddles and their flat tails as a rudder.
• Each beaver uses its chisel-sharp teeth to cut down over 200 trees a year, to use both as food and building materials.
• Beavers are one of nature’s builders, using mud, twigs and bark to build a lodge to live in. They contruct the lodge on a platform in a pond, with all the entrances underwater.
• Beavers remain active in the winter, beneath the ice of their pond. If their water source isn’t deep enough, they build a dam to create a deeper pond so it won’t freeze all the way through.

If you’ve ever heard the phrase “busy as a beaver”, now you know why – beavers are always busy, building and repairing their constructions!

About the Design

I love how beavers sit up on their back feet, using their tail for balance, and that’s the distinctive pose I tried to capture in my design.

I think you’ll love how it all comes together – the body shaping, the cute little arms and big webbed back feet, and of course the iconic tail.

Buy Now & Launch Discount

What are you waiting for? Pick up my Beaver 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 Beaver pattern to your shopping cart, and enter the discount code BEAVERTAIL at checkout! (Offer ends Tuesday 5 March, 2019.)

I hope you love this beaver design as much as I do!

Don’t forget to tag me (I’m @planetjune everywhere) when you’ve made yours 🙂

If you’ve ever considered upgrading your craft/design hobby into a business, this post may offer an interesting insight, as I’m now both a professional designer in one field (crochet) and a hobby designer in another (knitwear), so I can speak to both sides of this.

My Hobby/Pro Designer Experiences

I’m really enjoying my journey as a knitwear designer – I get to design, make and wear my own clothes, and that feels like a pretty amazing process. Every now and then, I feel a little wistful that I’m not parlaying my designs into a new income stream by selling patterns for my sweaters. It may seem like an obvious next step, but there are many reasons why I don’t want to do this.

Knitting is my hobby. I enjoy doing it for relaxation in between my crochet designs. I like making clothes for myself, that fit me and in colours I’ll wear. I can take months or years to finish a design and it doesn’t matter. If something isn’t perfect I can fudge it to make it good enough to wear.

Crochet is my business. It’s how I earn my living. I enjoy the challenge of developing new designs – and I love the things I design! – but there’s always a voice at the back of my head thinking ‘How well will this translate into a pattern? How can I explain this technique? Can I simplify anything to make it more enjoyable to crochet?’ Every new design has to be as good as I can possibly make it, and, while I never hurry an individual design, there’s always pressure to have regular new pattern releases, to keep PlanetJune in people’s minds and keep my business going.

Support. I’ve built an extensive website full of tutorials to help crocheters successfully follow my patterns. I don’t have the time or inclination to do that for knitting techniques. At best, I could provide links to other sites that offer tutorials, and that’s not the level of service people expect from me.

Fitted garments. I intentionally don’t design fitted garments in crochet. When I design and knit clothes for myself, I make them to fit me (short and pear-shaped). There are so many different body types and shapes, and it’s important that your clothes fit your shape as well as your size, or they won’t look or feel good on you. And I love making knitwear for myself that makes me feel good when I wear it!

If I designed a (knit or crochet) garment in the style I like as a pattern for sale, I’d have to:

1. design it for ‘standard’ body measurements
2. make a standard-sized sample (that wouldn’t fit me well!)
3. find a ‘standard’ shaped lady to model it for the pattern photos
4. either accept that ‘non-standard’ bodies (i.e. most people!) won’t be 100% happy with the result of my pattern, or offer extensive customization advice for how to modify the sizes to fit your own shape

The other option would be to change my design style to create very simple, non-fitted, rectangle-based garments that will work for most people as-is, but that’s not a style I’d enjoy either making or wearing. (There are also plenty of designs like that already, so I probably wouldn’t even make any money from trying to sell something I didn’t want to make in the first place!)

My Decision

I’m sure there are many more potential difficulties I haven’t even thought of, but just these few are more than enough to keep me from starting down the path of publishing my knitwear designs.

I know I don’t have time to start a parallel second career, and certainly not to run a knitwear pattern business with the level of quality and support that (I hope) people have come to expect from PlanetJune.

So, at least for the foreseeable future, I’m keeping my knitting (and garment design) on a purely hobby level. But I do love sharing what I’ve made, and I hope my projects will inspire others to try knitting (or crocheting, or sewing) a garment. It’s a very empowering feeling to be able to make your own clothes, and so satisfying when you get it right and it actually fits!

Hobby or Business?

Finding a way to make a profitable business from your hobby may sound like a dream come true, but it has the potential to suck all the joy out of your hobby, and, at best, it permanently changes your relationship with your craft.

I’m endlessly grateful that I’ve been able to build a successful business from my crochet designs. I try to keep innovating and developing new techniques to keep my designs fresh and exciting – both for my customers, and for my own enjoyment and improvement in my craft!

But, even so, I do sometimes miss the freedom of being able to create more complex crocheted art pieces that wouldn’t make a good pattern. Keeping my knitting as a purely creative outlet, with no motive other than making things I want to make, has given me that freedom back. It’s a way to balance the pressure of creating for my business with the joy and relaxation that only comes with making for fun.

So, the moral of the story is: there’s no right answer as to whether you should try to turn your hobby into a money-making venture:

• A hobby gives you complete artistic freedom, relaxation, enjoyment, and personal satisfaction.
• A business reduces all those things in exchange for the possibility of success: happy customers, recognition, more financial freedom, etc.

Having a hobby can give you a release from the stresses of everyday life. Turning it into a business adds to those stresses, but if you’re willing to put in time, hard work, and the determination to keep going even when you don’t feel like it, turning your hobby into a business can be very rewarding.

Or you could keep it more casual – instead of aiming to start a serious business enterprise, you could have a ‘hobby business’, where you sell a few things you’ve made to pay for your craft supplies etc, but don’t try to scale it up into a full-time business.

On the other hand, there’s a lot to be said for the pure joy of making just for fun! Maybe you should keep your craft as a hobby, like my knitting- it’s important to protect the things that make you happy. 🙂

So, what’s your experience? Have you ever considered turning your hobby into a business? Have my words made you think about doing (or not doing!) it? Or have you already tried, and how did that change your relationship with your hobby?

I’d love to know! Please leave your thoughts in the comments below…