PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

Note: Don’t miss the giveaway at the end of this post!

You’ve probably heard of MOO before – the company that turns your Flickr images into mini business cards – but they now offer a lot more: full size business cards, greeting cards and postcards, stickers and labels, and more. And you don’t need a Flickr account to use them – you can upload your photos directly to MOO.

MOO asked me if I’d like to test out their service, and I was happy to oblige – I’d wanted to order some minicards anyway, but had no idea that they’d be able to ship to me in South Africa! It turns out that MOO have two websites (US and UK) but they ship worldwide from both those locations (if you’re international, compare shipping prices to your country from each site before you order, to get the best deal).

My Experience

I decided the most useful products for me would be lots of PlanetJune MiniCards and StickerBooks. (I also ordered a high quality dot grid notebook, because I love large notebooks when I’m designing, and the grid of dots makes it easy for me to draw crochet stitch patterns, write without sloping down the page, and sketch without lines getting in the way.)

The process for creating any size of cards or stickers is really simple – just browse your computer for some suitable photos, and upload them. The unique thing about MOO’s service is that you don’t need to have the same image on each of your cards: for no extra cost, you can upload as many images as you want, to the point where every card in your pack can have a different photo, if you want! (You can also use MOO’s design templates if you don’t want to start from scratch with your card design.)

Once you’ve uploaded your images, you can resize and crop each one to fill the frame nicely before approving the project. You can also delete any images that don’t look good, add extra pics, or save your project to edit later. A little tip: If you have several designs uploaded to one pack of cards/stickers, you’ll receive an equal number of each design. As my Baby Bunnies photo is so perfect for the MiniCard size and shape, I added that same photo several times, so I’d end up with lots of bunny cards and a few of each of my other choices.

Here’s what arrived:

Lots of pretties! Let’s look at the MiniCards first:

They look great: bright and colourful, and the photos are crisp and high-res. MiniCards are the same width as a standard business card, but half the height. Each card is printed in full colour on both sides of the high quality cardstock, so, for the first time ever, I have my logo and colour printing on the back of my business cards:

I want to address price before I move on. Although MOO’s prices may not look competitive compared with cheaper services like Vistaprint which I’ve used in the past, there are no hidden extras with MOO. When I used Vistaprint, by the time I’d added the glossy upgrade fee, the image upload fee, and the print on reverse side fee, the cards ended up being many times more expensive than they initially appeared to be, and only worked out to be cost-effective if I bulk-ordered 500 or 1000 cards at a time. And looking at both cards together, the print quality is much better on the MOO cards:

MOO (left) vs Vistaprint (right). Any fuzziness is from the extreme close-up, but you can see the clear grain pattern visible on the VP cards only.

Okay, now back to my order! I put together the most adorable StickerBooks:

Each sticker is just under an inch (22mm) in size. The stickers have rounded edges and look completely professional. My only problem with them is that they look so cute as a sticker collection, I’m going to have a hard time using any of the stickers!

As you can see from my earlier photo, MiniCards come packaged in a very nice classy white cardboard box, but as they are an unusual shape, I also bought a MiniCard holder to keep my cards looking pristine when I’m out and about:

I chose this hot pink shade so I’ll quickly be able to find it in my bag when needed, but you can also get sensible black and white versions. And this is, for me, the genius part of MOO cards. Now when I meet someone and they ask what I do, I can whip out my pink card holder and say “I design the patterns for these”:

Pick a card; any card…

I’ve already tried it and it’s a great icebreaker – nobody can resist taking the cards and looking through them all. Then I can casually say “keep your favourite, if you like” and they look thrilled as they try to choose the one they like best. The result is that I’ve handed out my business card (and my details are on the back, so I may get a new customer as a result), but my new friend feels like they’ve been given a gift instead of having contact details forced on them. Win-win 🙂

Giveaway Time!

MOO have very generously offered to give three PlanetJune readers their choice of either 50 Classic Business Cards or 100 MiniCards. (Classic Business Cards are exactly the same as MiniCards in terms of quality etc; the only difference is that they’re standard business card size).

The prizes includes standard worldwide shipping, so this contest is open to everyone – yay!

To enter:

• Just leave a comment on this post saying what you’d use your MOO cards for if you win!
• One entry per person, please.
• Make sure the email address you leave with your comment is valid, so I can contact you if you win (don’t worry, that field is private, so only I will see it).
• You may enter until 6pm (EST) 11.59pm (PST) on Tuesday January 22nd 2013. I’ll draw the 3 random winners from all the entries after that time.

Good luck!

UPDATE 24 Jan: Thanks to everyone who entered! Just to keep you in the loop, I’ll be drawing the winners in the next few days (when I have time to set up the random drawing) and I’ll update this post with the winners’ names once I’ve done that 🙂

I suffer from hand pains similar to arthritis, especially when I overuse my hands with too much crochet, typing, driving, etc. A few years ago, I saw some hand specialists and was given various support devices to help minimise the pain and help my recovery. The biggest problem is at the base of my thumbs (the ‘basal joint’, according to the hand specialist I saw), and, over the years, I’ve discovered that what helps most is the warmth and compression provided by a stretchy fitted glove that supports my thumb.

1. Wrist support prescribed by specialist (good for wrist pains, but it does nothing for my thumb).
2. Custom-made rigid thumb support to immobilise my thumb joint (I only wear it at night now, as I can’t do anything with my hand while wearing it).
3. Handeze therapeutic support gloves are quite helpful, but the side seams dig into my hands, so I have to wear them inside out. I also find the fabric between my fingers slightly annoying.
4. My first prototype sewn thumb-support glove.

My well-worn thumb-support glove.

After trying all sorts of options, I developed the fingerless support gloves pictured above, sewn from stretch fabric (with the seams on the outside so they don’t dig into my hands). I’ve worn them for years whenever I feel the need, and, as you can see, they now look a little worse for wear!

I need to make some more, but, in the meantime, I found some stretchy sock-type yarn (Elle Stretch) and wondered if I could use that to crochet some gloves that may look a little more respectable to wear in public, help support my hands with warmth and compression, and still be flexible and unobtrusive enough to let me crochet, type, etc without hindrance. I decided to make these gloves a little longer than the fabric gloves, to keep my knuckles and wrists warm and supported too. And here’s the result:

I approached this project just like I would the shaping for an amigurumi: single crochet in a spiral, with (invisible) increases and decreases for shaping, to match the shape of my hand exactly. To save breaking the yarn, I surface crocheted down the finished thumb to get back to the hand and continue the main part of the glove. To keep it stretchy, I used foundation single crochet in place of chains for the foundation and the thumb gusset.

You can see that the shape conforms to my hand so well that the gloves are still hand-shaped even when I’m not wearing them! Although, from the above photo, they may look rigid and uncomfortable, the stretch in the yarn means they have plenty of give and I can easily move my hands into any position (see the photo below), so they’re fine to wear while typing and crafting. I’m actually wearing them now, as I type this post 🙂

Please don’t ask for a pattern – as this is a very fitted glove, I shaped it to fit my hands perfectly. There are so many factors to consider: gauge, the stretchiness of the yarn, and the size/shape of your hand; creating a pattern that would work for all hand sizes would be more work than I could justify.

Isn’t it interesting to see how my amigurumi-shaping skills can be translated into making functional items, as well as decorative ones? I wonder what other useful objects I could crochet…

Thanks to my Commissions system, it’s time to launch my 21st dog crochet pattern, AmiDogs Scottish Terrier:

Queue or favourite Scottie on Ravelry:

My Scottie Dog completes Set 7 of the AmiDogs, for what it’s worth – I mostly just make the sets now for my Etsy shop, as almost everyone takes advantage of the mix-and-match Custom Set for the same price in my shop. But, if you’ve been waiting for AmiDogs Set 7, here’s the group shot of #19 Basset Hound, #20 Rottweiler, and #21 Scottish Terrier:

I made my Scottie’s collar in red and green to hint at a Scottish tartan, but I don’t know if that comes through on such a small scale! Either way, it adds a nice splash of colour to an all-black dog with black eyes and a black nose…

Here are the other 20 AmiDogs breeds:

Don’t forget to download the re-released patterns of any of these you’ve already purchased! The new layout saves 1-2 pages on average, and the updated patterns include details like finished size info and US/UK conversions; they print equally well on letter- or A4-sized paper, and they’ve been updated with extra information and tips. Just log back into your PlanetJune account to re-download the new versions of your patterns. (If you originally ordered through Etsy or similar, see yesterday’s re-release announcement for how to get the new versions.)

After the epic task of re-editing and re-formatting all my prior dog designs, plus creating the new Scottie, I feel a bit dogged-out now – I definitely need a break before I design any more AmiDogs! You can still commission new designs though, if your favourite dogs are missing from my collection – I have 4 fully pledged commissions in the queue, so, even if another new design was commissioned today, it’d be months before I get to it.

If you know someone who loves Scotties or has a Scottish connection, you can pick up the AmiDogs Scottish Terrier pattern in the shop right now. Or, if you’d like to add several dogs to your pattern collection, I recommend my AmiDogs Custom Set – you can choose any 3 dog breeds for a bargain price. And you’ll get the AmiDogs Collar pattern as a free bonus with any AmiDogs purchase 🙂

Thanks to everyone who commissioned me to make this design – if you haven’t already, you can log into your PlanetJune account to download your pattern! Next up on the commissions list: the Killer Whale (Orca) – I’ll be collecting pledge monies on Monday for that one, and then I can start figuring out those lovely black and white markings…

I’m updating my entire back catalogue of patterns with extra information and tips and a new space-saving layout, and re-releasing them in batches as they are ready. Please see Crochet Pattern Re-Releases for more information.

Today, I’ve re-released all the AmiDogs patterns, so the new versions of any you’ve previously purchased are ready for you to download! Log back into your PlanetJune account at any time in the next 2 weeks, and you’ll see the download buttons for all your past AmiDogs pattern purchases have been re-enabled so you can click and download the new versions.

Free Collar Pattern

From today forwards, all AmiDogs patterns will now come with a free bonus 1-page PDF with instructions for crocheting a simple but effective collar for your dogs, pictured below. This pattern is a separate download (automatically included with each order), so, if you buy more than one AmiDogs pattern, you need only download the collar pattern once – it’s the same pattern for all the dogs.

The new collar pattern. And, ooh, look – a sneak peek of AmiDogs #21, Scottish Terrier! Stay tuned: the Scottie Dog pattern will be coming tomorrow 😉

Now, what I didn’t realise until a moment ago was that your previous orders can’t be updated to include the free collar pattern – oops. So here’s what I’m going to do:

• I’m putting the Collar pattern up as Donationware for $1 in the shop, but I don’t expect you to pay for it. (If you want to send me a donation, of course that’s always appreciated, but that’s not my intention here.)
• If you plan to buy more AmiDogs, please just wait until you order your dog pattern(s), and you’ll get the collar pattern automatically.
• If you’ve bought all the AmiDogs you want but would like the Collar pattern to go with them, please email me within the next 2 weeks and include the order number of a previous order that included an AmiDogs pattern (you’ll find the number in your order confirmation email, and in your list of orders in My Account). I’ll email you back with a $1 discount code off the Collar pattern, so you can ‘buy’ it for a dollar with a $1 discount, i.e. you’ll be able to get it for free.

Sorry it’s a bit convoluted! But it should work 🙂

Don’t Miss your Free Updates

Never miss the two-week pattern re-release window: sign up for the Crochet Pattern Updates mailing list. This list is just for pattern re-release announcements, and, if you sign up for it, you’ll get a short email notification every time a new batch of patterns has been re-released and is ready to download (no more than one or two emails per month until the reformat project is complete).

Missing Orders

Once a pattern has been re-released, all new orders for that pattern will automatically receive the updated version, and, if you’ve already bought the pattern, you can download the re-release for no additional charge from your PlanetJune account. But not all orders are there – here are a few reasons why you may have received patterns by email instead:

• You commissioned a pattern.
• You won a pattern (through ‘Review and Win’, a CAL prize, etc).
• You ordered patterns prior to July 2008 (when I replaced my PayPal shopping cart with my fully-featured shop).
• You ordered patterns through Etsy (or another online storefront).

If any of these (or another reason) apply to you, you can still get your pattern re-releases! I just need a few details from you so I can set up a dummy order in your PlanetJune account, including all your ‘missing’ patterns. I do not have time to email re-releases to anyone; if you want the new versions you must email me so I can set up your dummy order, or re-purchase them.

Instructions for Missing Orders:

1. Make a list of all your PlanetJune patterns that do not show in your PlanetJune account (one per line, please) together with where you bought/won them (for each pattern, just put Etsy, commission, which contest, etc). I need this info so I can verify your purchases.
   • Tip: to quickly see all your PlanetJune Etsy orders, click this link: Search for all planetjune purchases in your Etsy account
2. If you don’t already have a PlanetJune account, create one now.
3. Email me (that’s To: june@planetjune.com, Subject: Missing Patterns) and include:
   • The list of your missing patterns and where you bought/won them from
   • If you ordered through Etsy, your Etsy username
   • The email address you use to login to your PlanetJune account (if different to the one you’re emailing me from)

Depending on demand, it may take me a while to input all these dummy orders! I have no idea how many people will take me up on this offer, but there are potentially thousands of orders to input, so please be patient if it takes me a while to get to yours. I’ll verify and process them when I have time, and they will all be ready by the time all my patterns have been updated and re-released. At that point, I’ll unlock all your orders so you can re-download the updates.

If you send your email quickly, I’ll be able to process it before I get swamped with requests, and you’ll be able to download your patterns as soon as I complete each batch of re-releases. Please do get your list to me as soon as you can.

Phew! Okay, that’s it for today; I’ll be back tomorrow with the Scottie pattern! Until then, enjoy your new and improved AmiDogs 😀

Review: e-magazines

I’ve only bought 2 or 3 crochet magazines over the past few years; to me they are expensive to buy, hard to find, and awkward to store. Now I know about digital magazines, though, I’ve changed my mind. I can read the latest magazines on my tablet and PC without the problem of storing years of back issues or having to throw out old issues to make room for new ones. Availability is a huge plus too: you can buy e-magazines from anywhere in the world for the same price, whereas finding the printed magazines outside North America is difficult and expensive, and you can download the latest issues as soon as they are released.

I hadn’t even heard of Zinio, a digital magazine provider, until they offered me some subscriptions to give away last month. My concern about e-magazines was that my magazines may be tied to one device, but, I can log into my Zinio account from all my devices (I have a desktop PC, laptop and Nexus 7 tablet) and download my subscriptions to any/all of them at no additional cost. That also means if I lose or replace a device, I won’t have lost my magazines, as they’ll all still be available from my account.

Now I can enjoy an e-mag while I crochet

I’ve really been enjoying the subscriptions Zinio gave me, and I wanted to let you know that, if you didn’t win my contest (or even if you did!), today (January 7th) is the last day to take advantage of their holiday sale. These are such great deals I couldn’t resist, so I just treated myself to another year’s subscription each of Crochet Today! and Interweave Crochet – only $10 for a whole year of one of these crochet magazines is a real bargain:

Update: As of today (Jan 14), Crochet Today! is still only $10 for an annual subscription 🙂

If you’re interested, click on the magazine cover photos above, and they’ll take you straight through so you can buy a subscription at Zinio. These are affiliate links, so I’ll make a few cents from your purchase, but this is a genuine recommendation – $10 for a year of each of these magazines seems like too good a deal to pass up, and I didn’t want you to miss out if you’d like to take advantage before this crazy sale ends today!

Pet-Along CAL

The January crochet-along is going well: we’re making pet animals this month, and we already have amigurumi dogs, hamsters, bunnies, an alpaca, and a gecko entered! Most of the pattern options are below – they’re all available from my shop except the Hamsters, which you’ll find in my book.

You can find the CAL details, and a bonus CAL discount on the PocketAmi Pets pattern, in the PlanetJune Ravelry group…
 

Review and Win contest

December’s ‘Review and Win’ winner is Nicole D, with her review of my Fuzzy Guinea Pig:

Perfection! A true embodiment of a guinea pig. Your little guy will come to life under your fingers, his shape forming readily with each stitch. He has bumps in all the right places and the loveable guinea bottom all owners come to adore.

I made one of these for my sister in law after her guinea pig passed and he elicited a squeal of excitement, a cuddle and easily an hour laminating on how lifelike he looks.

June’s pattern is remarkably easy to follow and contains everything you need to know to craft yourself a new friend.

Congrats Nicole – I’ll email you to find out which pattern you’d like as your prize 🙂

What an amazing year 2012 has been! Even though I’ve been exceedingly busy behind the scenes, when I look at all my 2012 patterns, I feel like I’ve made a lot of artistic progress in my designs this year too:

PlanetJune 2012 crochet patterns

In 2012…

• I created 25 new crochet patterns – a mix of animals, plants, geometric, accessories, commissions, and donationware. All different, and yet, somehow, all very me. Seeing them all together like this makes me feel accomplished!
• As part of my goal to create the essential online go-to reference, I created 9 new video tutorials, 7 photo tutorials, and a handy one-page index for all my crochet tutorials at www.planetjune.com/help 🙂
• I launched the PlanetJune logo and redesigned my blog to make it clearer and easier to use. (The homepage and shop redesigns have been shifted to the 2013 list…)
• I began refreshing my entire pattern catalogue with new clearer formatting, more details, and additional tips where they’d be beneficial. (Sign up for the pattern updates list if you’d like to be notified when you can download the updated versions of any patterns you’ve purchased!)

Personal Report

Without going into too much detail, living as a visitor in a foreign country (as opposed to a temporary resident, as I was when we first moved to Canada) is not at all easy. Being treated as a dependent wife instead of a person in my own right is endlessly frustrating; I can’t even do the most basic things (buy a phone, open a bank account, get a library card, etc) in my own name. I’m sure all this contributed to the stress-induced eczema I developed this year, which is complicating my life even further.

It’s not all bad though; the wildlife situation here is spectacular and we’ve had many wonderful nature experiences this year, as well as the small daily pleasures of our garden full of birds, butterflies and lizards. (If you’re interested, you can look back on my year of monthly nature posts.) And, if you’ve been missing my photos, I have good news: I’ve been saving up my photos of all the new animals and birds we’ve seen since my last nature post, and I’ll be doing a big South African wildlife update in the near future, so you can enjoy it too!

Business Report

2012 was all about building for the future: a growing business is a wonderful thing, but you have to be able to cope with the growth. To that end, I’m trying to improve everything so the business will run itself as much as possible, and my customers will be able to easily find answers to all their questions without having to ask me for personal help.

I never imagined that PlanetJune would get this far, but, aside from a slight blip when I moved halfway around the world, my business has grown by 1.5x per year, every year since 2007. I’m sure that growth can’t continue indefinitely – I don’t know of any millionaire crochet pattern designers, so there must be a ceiling! – but, through years of very hard work and some luck, I’ve built a serious business here.

Of course, this business growth brings its own challenges: as sales increase, so does the amount of admin and tech support required. To provide the same level of service to all my customers, I have to put in 50% more time each year – not a desirable or sustainable situation! I discussed this in my post on Beating Craft Business Overwhelm and I’m working on the strategies I outlined there. (And there’s a technical growth side too: I didn’t think I’d ever hit my huge 1TB/month bandwidth limit, but that happened this year, so I had to upgrade my server to cope with all that traffic.)

Looking back
Here’s what I said in last year’s review:

My resolution for 2012 is to work smarter, not harder. I need to slow down and enjoy life, not let it pass me by while I’m working non-stop. I want to invest time into things that will, in the long run, save me time in the technical and administrative sides of the business, leaving me with a larger proportion of time to spend on the creative and instructional sides, and having a life apart from my work.

Did that work? Yes and no. I’ve totally failed on the ‘slowing down and enjoying life’ part, but that was primarily because I’ve been focusing on the other part of the resolution: investing time in things that will save me time in the long run – putting the work in now that will save me endless work in future years.

Although this project is still ongoing, I’ve spent many weeks of 2012 wearing my web-developer hat and coding new PlanetJune features:

• A system to manage pattern commissions.
• A way to automatically re-enable pattern downloads when updates are available.
• A system for adding ‘dummy’ orders into the shop so people who didn’t originally order through the shop can still receive pattern updates.
• An order-fulfillment mechanism for Etsy orders so I won’t need to email patterns by hand any more. (Created, but not yet implemented.)

I’ve also implemented many smaller changes to streamline and automate the business, such as:

• The Master List for all my crochet tutorials, which has already proven to be an amazingly useful resource.
• A ‘triage’ system of rules for incoming emails (referrals to my tutorials, FAQ, or sellers’ list; a bank of standard responses to common questions; new policies such as not replying to any questions not written in English or providing support for patterns written by other people).
• Improved spam-blockers that reduced the spam I have to check from approx 800/day to approx 2/day (a huge time-saver!)

And, because you can’t work all the time and stay sane, I taught myself to knit, and made some stuff for fun:

My 2012 craft projects

What’s next?

Well, I’m still moving towards the goal where the business more-or-less runs itself and I’m free to design, innovate, and teach, and enjoy life without working all the time. Although I had hoped all the big automation and coding projects would be completed this year, that wasn’t realistic – probably because I keep adding to the list and coming up with more ideas! But the pieces I’ve already set in motion have made a huge difference to my workload, so I’m moving in the right direction.

I hope by next year’s review I really will have completed all my big tech goals, and then I’ll have more time to explore some of my other creative ideas – I have plans for online classes and ebooks that I don’t have a hope of finding time to create at the moment (but I’m writing everything down, so my notes will be waiting for me when I have time to get to them!)

This past year, I’ve worked harder than I ever have in my life – I’m essentially working 3 large jobs now: Designer (and photographer, editor, blogger, etc), Administrator (order processing, customer and tech support, etc), and Programmer (web developer, back-end tech support, server manager, etc). But the big goal here is worth it: to transition my business from a very hands-on one-person business to an automated one-person business, so I can spend the majority of my work time creating new designs and tutorials.

This interim stage is hard going, but I’m trying to do something here that (possibly) no other craft business has done: to grow past the one-person level without expanding or outsourcing. I’m hoping that all my automation strategies will pay off in 2013, and I’ll have a virtual assistant (in the form of my own website and systems reducing my workload) instead of having to hire an actual assistant.

Although I anticipate another year of very hard work behind the scenes of PlanetJune, I’m giving this plan one more year to succeed. If it doesn’t, I’d have to either find a way to scale back my business, or take on minions (unless I can come up with another alternative, as neither of those options appeal to me). But for now I’ll think positive: I can make this work!

On the creative side, I’m very excited about the coming year: I have loads of sketches for new designs that I’m looking forward to transforming into crochet; several design series I’ve already started prototyping; and some brand new concepts for design themes that I’m eager to research. I can’t wait to get stuck into some of my new ideas after the holidays…

Thank you so much for continuing to follow me on this journey – your support makes a huge difference to me. Although I know I’ll have some challenges this year, I’m really looking forward to 2013, and I hope you are too.

Happy New Year!

Time for the final CAL roundup of the year! The Accessory-Along was started in October, but we decided to extend it until now, so CALers could make lots of Christmas presents. I designed 2 new donationware patterns for this CAL: the Frosty Windows Scarf and Chunky Moebius Cowl – you’ll see lots of both of those below!

For details of the next CAL, which starts tomorrow, keep reading to the end of this post. And now to the roundup of beautiful projects made from my PlanetJune Accessories patterns:

Happy Christmas! Let’s celebrate with a look at the results of the 2012 PlanetJune Christmas Crochet-Along. Thank you to everyone who joined in; as always it’s so much fun to see what you’ve made. My contribution to this CAL was a thread crocheted poinsettia:

And now get ready to have your day brightened with an explosion of colourful Christmas crochet: