PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

Over the past couple of years, I’ve fallen out of the blogging habit. After my seclusion while writing The Essential Guide to Amigurumi, I found it difficult to get back into the comfortable swing of sharing things online.

I’ve been putting way too much pressure on myself to make things perfect, and trying to figure out what it means to be ‘professional’ without losing myself and what’s important to me. Posting online used to be easy, but then my anxious brain got in the way with thoughts that I may be old and irrelevant in today’s fast-paced and noisy social media landscape.

Then I remembered: blogging is the way I always enjoyed sharing – it’s slower, more thoughtful, higher quality and longer-lasting than social media. And I don’t (and won’t ever) have ads on my site, so visiting my blog can be a calming respite from the visual assault of endless ads and auto-playing videos – for me as well as you.

So, I’m going to try to relax and start posting here more frequently again, sharing my creative pursuits and what I’m enjoying. That’s mostly crochet and other crafts, with an occasional post about wildlife and nature, growing food in my garden, cooking/baking, and whatever else I find interesting!

I won’t be consistent – as always with me, I’ll only publish things when they’re ready. But I can tell you that I hope to have somewhere between a couple and a few posts per month, depending on my energy and other commitments.

I have lots of projects to catch you up on, so I hope you’ll join me in the coming months for my crochet content, explorations of different crafts, garden experiments, and behind-the-scenes posts about what it actually takes to write and publish a craft book like EGA!

Choose Your Options

You can hear from me and engage as much or as little as you like. Here are the ways you can stay connected:

• All the Blog Posts: If this sounds good, please subscribe to the blog now, and all my posts will be sent directly to your inbox in future so you’ll never miss another post!
• Just the Crochet (Newsletter): If you’re only here for my crochet content, please don’t subscribe to this blog. My monthly(ish) newsletter includes all my crochet-related news for the month including any relevant blog posts, so you’ll never miss out on any new patterns, tutorials or tips I have for you, without the other topics.
• Join In: If you’d like to share about your crafting, reading, cooking, gardening, pets, and life with other positive, friendly, crafty people, I highly recommend you join us in the PlanetJune Discord server! It’s our private ad-free space for text chatting and sharing pics. I find it’s a beautiful antidote to the noise of what social media has become, and our small group gives you a chance to make real connections and friendships with other like-minded souls.

So, hello again, and welcome if you’re new here! I’m really looking forward to sharing more of myself with you again. I hope you’ll enjoy my upcoming posts, and please do comment from time to time if you do – knowing you’re out there will be really encouraging as I try to get back into the swing of blogging…

It’s time for a new classic PlanetJune potted plant pattern! Perfect for the summer season – or adding the feel of summer at any time of year – my realistic Strawberry Plant crochet pattern makes a lovely ornamental piece, with its distinctive leaves, delicate white flowers and plump bright red berries.

Don’t you just want to reach out and pick one of these juicy strawberries?!

About the Design

For this strawberry plant, I was looking to create a simplified design with just the right amount of realism in a compact, well-balanced arrangement. The pot has a stylish textured band, and a new style of decorative edging that keeps the top edge of the pot nice and straight.

This pattern also includes bonus instructions for making adorable individual strawberries – perfect as play food, or to make into a cute keychain.

Pattern Details

I’ve put a lot of thought into making this pattern both easy and enjoyable for you to crochet. While it includes multiple pieces – pot, leaves, flowers, and berries – I’ve carefully designed it to minimise both the number of pieces and the amount of finishing needed:

• The elements are strategically positioned to give a full and balanced composition without requiring too many pieces.
• Each triple leaf is crocheted as a single piece, making the process a lot faster than you’d think!
• My instructions include the easiest methods to hide the yarn ends as you go and assemble the plant with minimal sewing.
• The complete pattern includes 13 pages, with detailed step-by-step photos for each element and clear diagrams for the final assembly.

I’ve also stuck to my usual design principles: the pattern requires no wires for support, and no tiny hooks or crochet thread. All you need is your usual worsted weight yarn, an E (3.5mm) hook, and some stuffing, and you’ll be ready to create a beautiful, realistic strawberry plant!

Bonus Tutorial: Amigurumi Double Ring

I’ve made a new photo tutorial (for right- and left-handers, of course) to accompany this pattern: the double ring for amigurumi. This technique is a more secure version of the magic ring for crocheting in the round.

This is one of those optional techniques that isn’t often necessary, and I don’t usually recommend it because it’s a little slower and more difficult than a standard magic ring. But it’s a useful technique to add to your arsenal for those times when you need a magic ring with extra strength or security, like making tiny strawberry flowers!

Buy your Strawberry Plant Pattern!

Ready to get started? Pick up the Strawberry Plant crochet pattern from my shop right now.

Or, if you’re not ready to make one just yet, add it to your Ravelry queue or favourites so you don’t forget:

A crocheted strawberry plant makes a cheerful and summery decoration, and I hope you’ll enjoy making this pattern. The unique construction is surprisingly satisfying, as all the pieces come together so quickly and easily, with such a pretty result!

For the past few months, I’ve been working on a behind-the-scenes project to update the PlanetJune online store to improve your experience and to streamline future updates. This was a massive project: I first built the shop in 2009, and the software and plugins I use have been upgraded multiple times since then, leaving me with thousands of messy files of patched and re-patched code.

I decided that the only way to clean things up was to start again from scratch, so I’ve rebuilt the entire shop using the latest codebase, and incorporated all the hundreds of customizations I’ve coded and built in over the years, from pay-what-you-want donationware to the complete list of all the patterns you’ve ever purchased (so you never accidentally buy anything twice or have to hunt through old orders to find a particular pattern).

Most of the changes are technical so you won’t see any differences, but I’ve made a few upgrades that you’ll be able to appreciate:

Product Photos

This is the big change! Some of my pattern photos are older than some of my customers, and both my equipment and my photography and image-editing skills have improved in the past 18 years! Here’s a summary of the improvements you’ll see:

RE-EDITED PHOTOS: I’ve reprocessed my older photos to be brighter, clearer and better colour balanced.

The AmiDogs were the worst offenders – with my old monitor I couldn’t tell that the sky sometimes looked purple or grey! Now they all match 🙂

CLEARER CATEGORIES: All the categories on the main page are larger and clearer and now look like ‘cards’ with rounded borders.

Pick a card, any card…

SQUARE LISTINGS: All the main product photos are larger and now have matching square dimensions, so they’re easier to view and browse through.

Some images were wide and short, some were tall and narrow – it’s so much cleaner now they’re all squares!

For the full effect, click through to the All Products page – keep scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling…

Clearer Links

I’ve added friendly URLs so you know what you’re looking at, for example:

OLD: /index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=19&products_id=403

NEW: /temperature-snake-amigurumi-crochet-pattern-and-workbook-p-403.html

Having the pattern name in the link is much more helpful than the previous words-and-numbers soup. (And the old links all still work too, if you have any of them saved.)

Custom Gift Certificates

I’ve added a custom value PlanetJune gift certificate, so now you can send a gift certificate for any dollar (and cent!) amount you want.

This is an easier way to gift specific patterns to someone – you can just send them a custom gift certificate for the exact amount, with a note telling them what you’d like them to spend it on! (See the Gift Certificate FAQ for instructions.)

A Fresh Start

The internet is always changing, and it takes work to keep up with the latest coding standards and security updates. I’ve been patching and updating my old shop code since 2009, and starting from scratch for this update was the best way to make sure I didn’t carry any problems forward. This was a huge undertaking (with literally thousands of files of code to comb through) but it’s very satisfying to know that this project is complete. Now that my shop has been refreshed inside and out, it looks much cleaner, and it’ll be much easier to keep it maintained and to make more improvements in future.

And, you know what, seeing all my patterns displayed nicely together on the All Products page lets me see what I’ve accomplished in a way I haven’t really been able to before. I’ve designed hundreds of patterns over the past 18 years, and I’m happy to stand behind all of them – that’s quite an accomplishment, isn’t it? Seeing them all together gives me fresh inspiration to keep adding to the PlanetJune pattern collection.

Please take a look around the new and improved PlanetJune shop – I hope you’ll find more treasures to enjoy now they’re easier to see and appreciate! And I’d love to hear your thoughts on the updates and what else you’d like to see in future improvements, so feel free to leave a comment or send me a message.

Today’s PlanetJune Story comes from Susan McCarthy from Norfolk MA. I always love to see people using my potted plant crochet patterns in new and creative ways, and Susan’s fabulous multi-tier succulent display definitely fits that bill!

I’ll let Susan explain:

I belong to the Garden Club of Norfolk (Massachusetts) and each month someone signs up to do a display for our town’s library. I decided to crochet a succulent display for the month of June. And for a week in June 2023, the Garden Club and Library cohosted Books in Bloom, where a dozen designers from the Club made floral displays inspired by a book…so my crocheted succulent display got to do double-duty and be part of the show as well.

I crocheted 46 plants for the three-tiered display. The top tier used June’s pattern for the large pot. I then expanded on the pattern to make the two larger pots for the middle and base. I inserted a circle of plastic canvas and a couple of stockings filled with plastic pellets to the bottom pot to keep the piece stable.

Well over a hundred hours of work done here and there over months (with, of course, some power crocheting two weeks before it was due for display!) I got so many compliments on the final piece. And I credited June on the card that sat with the display.

Thank you June for creating such wonderful patterns!

(Back to me, June, again!)

I love this display so much, and that it was part of the Books in Bloom Library show! You can see how much work Susan put into this, and it was definitely worth it to create such an amazing eye-catching project. Isn’t it wonderful?

Susan, I’m not surprised you’ve been showered with compliments about this piece! And thank you so much for sharing your story with us today 🙂

Please leave Susan a comment if you’ve enjoyed this post!

PS – If you’d like to crochet your own succulent display, Susan used the patterns from Succulent Collections 1, 2, 3 and 4 in her display, and you can find all those patterns (and more!) at www.planetjune.com/cacti!

Do you have a PlanetJune Story you’d like to share? I’d love to hear it! Please email your story to june@planetjune.com, together with one or more high quality photos showing what you’ve made from PlanetJune patterns. If I choose your story to feature here on the blog, I’ll send you your choice of pattern from my shop to say thank you!

After finishing my Duck and Goose pattern, I couldn’t resist a little seasonally-appropriate addition to the families, so here’s my new pattern: Ducklings and Goslings!

About the Pattern

My goal for this design was the simplicity of a rubber ducky combined with the realistic shape and markings of real baby ducks and geese. As a result, the assembly is super-simple – you only need to stitch the bill to the head, and the head to the body, and your adorable palm-sized baby bird is finished!

This pattern includes three mix-and-match options. By swapping the duckling and gosling bill shapes and the three different head and body marking options and changing the colours, you can make a wide variety of ducks and geese.

The single colour option is easy to crochet, and if you’re pressed for time you could make a whole flock of ducklings in yellow, brown, grey, black, white etc – fast and totally cute! Or, add in the lifelike markings to make even more adorably realistic babies.

Tip: You can also brush your finished birds (before adding the bills) if you’d like to make fluffy ducklings! (See my Brushed Amigurumi tutorial for full instructions and examples.)

Meet the Ducklings and Goslings!

First up, we have the classic single-colour duckling (or gosling, if you swap the bill!):

Next, the duckling markings, inspired by adorable baby Mallards with their distinctive eye stripe:

And, last but not least, the gosling markings, with a simpler colour pattern inspired by baby Canada Geese:

(While these colourways can also apply to other types of baby ducks and geese, I have an ulterior motive for naming them Mallard and Canada Goose: once I have enough sales of the Duck and Goose crochet pattern to justify making adult Mallard and Canada Goose Expansion Packs for it, these babies will be ready and waiting to greet their parents!)

Links to Buy and Deals

You can buy the Ducklings and Goslings pattern alone, or bundled with the Duck and Goose pattern for a special price.

Note: If you’ve already bought the Duck and Goose pattern, you don’t have to miss out on this deal! Just buy Ducklings and Goslings, then email me with 1) your Ducklings and Goslings order number and 2) the order number (or date) from when you bought Ducks and Geese, and I’ll send you a coupon for $2 off your next order of $5 or more. (You can find your order numbers in ‘My Account’, and the coupon will remain valid for a whole year, so don’t worry if there’s nothing else you want to buy right now!)

Handy Links:

• Duck and Goose Families multipack
• Ducklings and Goslings pattern
• Duck and Goose pattern
• Ducklings and Goslings on Ravelry:
• Duck and Goose on Ravelry:

We’re also just about to start a spring-themed CAL in the PlanetJune groups on Discord and Ravelry, and these ducklings and goslings will fit right in!

Find these spring-themed PlanetJune crochet patterns here >>

Please come and join us and crochet anything PlanetJune that fits the theme: baby animals, spring flowers, Easter eggs, an accessory or home decor in fresh spring colours, etc…

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 struggled to find the perfect eyes for your smaller amigurumi, you’ll love my technique for making tiny yarn eyes. In my latest video, I’ll show you my foolproof method for making a pair of perfectly matched tiny child-safe yarn eyes with a lifelike sparkle.

This technique is an embroidery-free foolproof method for making tiny yarn eyes, spots and dots for amigurumi. It works especially well for amigurumi that are too small for safety eyes. Yarn eyes are a child- and pet-safe alternative to plastic eyes, and this method gives you more control than embroidering French knots, so you can make sure you have a perfectly matched pair of eyes.

L: tiny yarn eyes, R: plastic eyes

My Baby Snake pattern is a perfect use for these tiny eyes – it’s not easy to fit the shafts and backs of plastic eyes into such a tiny head, and the yarn eyes look so bright and lifelike!

Although there’s no actual crocheting in this video, I’ve made right- and left-handed versions anyway, so you can see how I use the needle exactly as you’ll see it when you do it yourself. (I’ve also added text instructions with photos for those of you who prefer to read written instructions.)

Go to the Tiny Yarn Eyes for Amigurumi video tutorial >>

I’m so excited to have a new design to share with you today! I was a little worried that my amigurumi design mojo would be gone forever after pouring everything I had into The Essential Guide to Amigurumi, but, after a little time off after Christmas, it all came flooding back and I’m so happy to be able to present the first new PlanetJune pattern of 2024: Duck and Goose!

Duck and Goose Fun Facts

Ducks and geese are both members of the family Anatidae (together with swans). They have a similar appearance and features, including webbed feet for swimming and waterproof feathers. But look closely and you can see the differences:

• Ducks feed mostly in the water, and have a broad flattened bill adapted for dabbling in the water to find and filter their food (primarily aquatic plants and small invertebrates).
• Geese feed mostly on land and have a strong pointed beak with sharp edges that are used for tearing their food (primarily grass and other vegetation).
• Geese have a much longer, more slender neck than ducks, which lets them easily reach down to the ground to eat grass.
• In real life, you can also tell ducks and geese apart by their relative sizes, as most geese are much larger than most ducks. (But that doesn’t apply to the amigurumi versions!)

About the Pattern

For this design, I concentrated on the distinctive shapes of real ducks and geese, paying close attention to what the two birds have in common and what makes them different, to create a pair of perfectly proportioned waterfowl.

The end result is a lovely low-sew pattern, with very little assembly needed – apart from the beak and feet, there are only two pieces to crochet! The realistic shaping is built right in, so all you need to do is follow the pattern and a beautiful Duck or Goose will magically appear beneath your fingers as you crochet.

Both the duck (pictured above) and goose (pictured below) options are included in the same pattern. You’ll start by choosing whether to make the duck or goose head, neck and bill, and then continue to the body and feet. As always, every step is clearly explained, with photos wherever needed to aid in the assembly.

Buy Now

Ready to get started? Pick up the Duck and Goose crochet pattern from my shop right now.

Or, if you’re not ready to make one just yet, add them to your Ravelry queue or favourites so you don’t forget:

More Ducks and Geese..?

There’s lots of scope for me to design Expansion Packs for this pattern that would let you make specific varieties of distinctly coloured ducks and geese… Would you like a Mallard pattern? Or maybe a Canada Goose? If this pattern sells well I’d love to expand the collection with some expansion packs for different ducks and geese. (Please leave your requests in the comments so I’ll know what you want me to make next!)

I can’t wait to see your ducks and geese – please share them in the PlanetJune Community groups (it’ll be like a waterfowl CAL!)

I’m so happy with these sweet and shapely birds, and I hope you’ll love this pattern as much as I do. 🙂

Throughout 2023, over 800 people from all over the world crocheted along with me to create vibrantly striped Temperature Snakes, with one round of the body crocheted per day in a colour that represented the day’s temperature wherever they live. We’ve waited and watched all year long as the snakes grew in length and became more and more colourful, and now they’re finally finished!

Enter the Temperature Snake Gallery >>

I’ve set up this CAL gallery to showcase and celebrate our year-long crochet journey. You can view all the snakes together, or click into each project to see more about the snake and where it came from.

You’ll see snakes that represent daily highs and daily lows, southern hemisphere snakes whose colours run hot-cold-hot instead of cold-hot-cold, birth year snakes, monthly short snakes, book log snakes, and more – and each one is totally unique, using custom colour palettes and localized data.

Every snake is a gloriously colourful personal record of the year, and I do recommend you immerse yourself in the gallery by looking through all the full-size photos. With so many colours in each project, you can’t get the full effect by looking at a tiny thumbnail!

At the time I write this, 53 snakes have been submitted to the gallery already (congratulations to those who managed to stick with it all year long and complete their snake on time!) and I’m sure we’ll see dozens more snakes being added to the gallery over the coming weeks and months. I’m looking forward to watching the gallery grow and the number of snakes and countries represented continuing to increase.

• If you participated in the CAL and haven’t submitted your snake to the gallery yet, please do (look for the ‘Submit Your Snake!’ section at the top of the gallery page).
• If life got in the way last year and you haven’t completed your snake yet, that’s okay! The gallery will remain open for submissions indefinitely, so there’s no hurry – we’ll welcome your snake into the gallery whenever you complete it. 🙂
• And, if you didn’t make a snake last year, how about making one for 2024? The complete Temperature Snake crochet pattern and workbook are now available, so you can start crocheting at any time!

Enjoy the Temperature Snake Gallery – it’s the beautiful and impressive culmination of a super-fun and engaged year-long CAL. Thank you to everyone who participated, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!