PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

Make your own aquatic nursery with my new Baby Cephalopod collections: Octopus & Squid, and Cuttlefish & Nautilus. A perfect use for yarn scraps, these mini amigurumi take only 25-30m of yarn apiece, and work perfectly in any colour.

Cephalopod Fun Facts:

• Cephalopods are a type of mollusc, which means they have no skeleton and are related to snails.
• Cephalopod means ‘head-foot’, referring to the fact that their arms and tentacles are attached to their heads, not their bodies.
• There are only 4 types of cephalopod, so you can crochet a complete collection if you buy my patterns!
• Only the nautilus has a visible shell; squids and cuttlefish have an internal shell, and octopuses have no shell at all.
• In real life, each cephalopod has a different pupil shape: Nautilus (tiny pinhole), Squid (large and round), Cuttlefish (‘W’ shape), Octopus (horizontal slit). In amigurumi world, big black eyes are just fine though 😉

Meet the Cephalopods:

Baby Octopus has long curling arms and a realistic body shape:

Fun Fact: Octopuses are completely soft, with no bones or shell, so they can squeeze themselves through tiny gaps barely larger than their eye!

Baby Squid has two long tentacles and swimming fins at the back:

Fun Fact: There are about 300 species of squid, ranging in size from a only few centimetres to over 10m long!

Baby Cuttlefish has an undulating fin all the way around its body.

Fun Fact: Cuttlefish squirt a brown ink called sepia – this is the source of the name of the colour sepia!

Baby Nautilus has a mass of tentacles and a shell with a hood.

Fun Fact: Nautiluses are ancient cephalopods known as ‘living fossils’ because they’ve remained virtually unchanged for 500 million years!

About the Patterns:

Baby Cephalopods are between 5 and 6.5″ long, including tentacles. Each design is crocheted in only 2 or 3 pieces, so there’s minimal finishing to do when you’ve finished crocheting. And, although each has different arms/tentacles, they all use the same basic method, so, once you’ve made your first cephalopod, you’ll be able to fly through crocheting the tentacles for the others.

I think the few pieces and fast assembly would make these designs perfect candidates for those of you who enjoy selling your crocheted items…

All the designs are very simple to crochet, except the Nautilus, which is slightly more advanced as the body and shell look like two separate pieces, but they are actually one piece – the hood is the only separate part. (I think you’ll enjoy my special technique though – it’s very clever! I’ve included lots of extra photos with it to make sure everyone will able to create the clever two-piece shell/body effect.)

As well as my usual step-by-step photos, any pieces that are crocheted in non-amigurumi style include crochet stitch diagrams in addition to full written instructions, so you can follow whichever method you prefer. (I’m hoping you’ll find the stitch diagrams to be a useful addition to my patterns; one diagram is clearer than a whole series of round-by-round photos.)

These designs are available as two sets of 2 patterns:

Left: Baby Cephalopods 1: Octopus & Squid
Right: Baby Cephalopods 2: Cuttlefish & Nautilus

But, because these baby best friends can’t bear to be apart, I’ve put together a multipack deal for you when you buy both sets: Baby Cephalopods 1 & 2 includes all four patterns for a bargain price.

Not ready to buy yet? Queue/heart them on Ravelry!
Set 1: Set 2:

I first sketched out these designs and picked out the yarn colours two years ago, before I left Canada. It’s taken all this time to simplify and perfect them. I think I’ll make a second set in more realistic colours, because, now I’ve finally finished the patterns, they’re irresistibly quick and fun to crochet! I hope you’ll enjoy making them as much as I do…

This post isn’t PlanetJune-related but I do love a bargain and I’ve found some crafty deals you might like too, so I wanted to share them! If you’re waiting for a crochet post, I’ll have a brand new pattern collection to reveal, next week…

MOO card winners and discount codes

Thanks to everyone who entered my MOO giveaway! I wish you could all win – it was great to hear about your small businesses, crafty ventures and good ideas that could benefit from some MOO cards.

But there can only be 3 winners, and random.org tells me they are Kati, Diana Mullins-Atkinson, and Katie. Congratulations to you all!

I’ll email you to notify you of this too, but I’ll be passing your names and email addresses along to Dan at MOO and he’ll contact you to arrange your prize – your choice of 50 Classic Business Cards or 100 MiniCards 🙂

Now, if you didn’t win, but thinking about what you’d do with your MOO cards has got you all excited, I have another offer for you! With my order, I received 5 discount codes each worth 15% off your first order at MOO, and I’d like to share them with people who can make use of them. Here’s what I have:

• 3x 15% off your entire order
• 1x 15% off any 1 product (the cheapest, if you order more than one item)
• 1x 15% off 1 pack of MiniCards

As I don’t know how many people may want them, and people read my blog at different times of day, I think the fairest thing would be to give you a 24-hour window to let me know if you want a code.

• If you haven’t ordered from MOO before and would like to now, please leave a comment below to let me know. (If you could also say if you’d be happy with any of the codes or you need one in particular, I’ll try to match the winners with their requests so the codes will do the most good!)
• If there are more than 5 requests, 24 hours from now, I’ll randomly draw 5 to get the codes.
• If there are less than 5 requests in 24 hours, I’ll keep this offer going until I’ve received 5 requests and given out all the codes!

UPDATE 27 Jan: All the codes have now been claimed! I’m glad they’ve found good homes. Chrisie, Aimee, Amanda W, milla1222, Karina – I’ll email your codes to you tomorrow. Hope you enjoy your discounted MOO orders 🙂

Try Zinio for free

I must confess I’m quite addicted to Zinio now – it’s made buying magazines so easy that I’ve bought digital subscriptions to crochet magazines, and also to some knitting titles (for clothing inspiration and techniques), and Ideas magazine (for some local South African crafty flavour). It also makes it really easy to pick up a one-off back issue of a magazine that has a pattern or article you want, which is very handy!

Anyway, I found an amazing offer to try $50 of Zinio managzines for free – you have to activate it by January 31st, so hurry and get on it if you’d like to take advantage of this deal too! There’s a wide selection of magazines to choose from and, although there aren’t any crochet mags included, there are two knitting titles and a nice selection of other crafty magazines, as well as food, home, lifestyle, computers, photography, music, sports, etc etc.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Click here and then click ‘Claim Coupon’ to get started.
2. Once you get your code, copy and paste it somewhere safe (so you can log back in again later and choose more magazines).
3. Login here to redeem your voucher.
4. Don’t worry if nothing happens when you’ve selected your magazines – you’ll be emailed the links in a couple of days. I’ve tried it and it does work; it just takes a while!

Now, here’s how I made the deal even better for myself. You don’t have to order all 18 magazines at once, and you have 90 days to redeem them. So:

1. Keep a note of your voucher code – you’ll need it to log back in later.
2. Select single issues, not subscription, to get the latest issue and be able to choose 18 different magazines.
3. Some magazines only have a 1-issue subscription available, but if you log back into the redemption page in a month (or whenever the next issue comes out), you’ll be able to get the next issue of the same magazine free too! A handy tip: you’ll receive whichever issue has its cover pictured on the page at the time you redeem your voucher.

I hope you enjoy these deals. Don’t forget to leave a comment requesting a MOO code, if you’d like one!

Last July, I posted about my plan to design one knitted and one crocheted cardigan for myself, just for fun:

Although the crocheted cardigan took a fraction of the time of the knitted one to make, I actually completed the knitted one first – probably because it was Southern hemisphere winter, so knitting a warm cardigan was more appealing than weaving in lots of fiddly ends on a lacey crocheted cardigan! But now, finally, here’s my finished crocheted cardigan:

You may be thinking that the stitch pattern looks familiar, and you’d be right: I knew I wouldn’t be publishing a pattern for this cardigan, but I liked this stitch pattern so much after I came up with it that I used the same stitch pattern in my Frosty Windows Scarf too – no point in keeping a good stitch pattern to myself when you can enjoy it too, in another format!

The story of this cardigan…

I had 3 skeins of deliciously smooth and soft LB Collection Cotton Bamboo yarn in my yarn stash since I chose it as my prize for winning the Instructables/Lion Brand Critter Contest in 2010. I intended to make a PlanetJune Accessories pattern of some sort from it and came up with a stitch pattern, but I hadn’t come up with the perfect project idea.

I picked it up again a few months ago and decided to do something with it. I still liked the stitch pattern I’d designed and thought I’d try turning it into a light summery cardigan. I used a slightly larger hook than recommended so I’d have a nice drapey fabric. I didn’t work out a formal pattern – I just measured some of my existing cardigans and crocheted pieces (two fronts and a back) in my stitch pattern that approximated those sizes. Knowing I didn’t have to keep notes for a pattern to publish made it easy to fly through the crocheting!

My first problem came when I realised I wouldn’t have enough yarn to complete both sleeves and finish the garment – and obviously no way to get more from the US without great expense – so I had to rethink the design for 3/4 length sleeves. I’d worked the sleeves from the cuff up, and I was working both at once (crocheting one round of one sleeve, and repeating the same round on the other sleeve with a separate ball of yarn) so I’d make sure I’d end up with two sleeves that matched. Changing my design to 3/4 length sleeves meant frogging both sleeves entirely and starting again, as they were too fitted at the wrist to wear the original cuff higher up my arm.

And then my second problem: as I’d made the sleeves fairly close-fitting, the armholes I’d left in the body were far too large. That was easily fixed; I just crocheted an edging around both the sleeve tops and the armholes, decreasing as I went around the armholes until I had the same number of stitches in each piece. (An added bonus of this was that the seaming was ridiculously easy and tidy, as I had the same number of stitches on each side to begin with.)

Shoulder seam

To tie it together, I used the same stitch for the body/sleeve linking stitches that I planned to use for the cardigan’s edging. And then it was just a matter of edging the entire garment, adding space for buttons on one side and buttonholes on the other. I edged the cardigan using linked stitches (which I love – I’ll make a video tutorial for them at some time!) to add some structure without stiffness, and I used foundation stitches to leave vertical buttonholes – easy and neat.

All that remained was to weave the ends in securely, block the cardigan, and sew on the buttons. I found the perfect buttons in a craft shop in Jersey while visiting my parents last July, but then I lost my momentum as it was winter here and not the right weather for this type of light cover-up. But now it’s summer and this cardigan is just what I need! So weave, wash, block, sew, photograph, and here we are 🙂

I flipped the corner up to show you one of the wooden button (left) and one of the hidden anchor buttons on the inside (right)

I used my favourite technique of stitching each button with an unobtrusive anchor button on the inside, to avoid putting strain on the yarn. The finished cardigan is light, comfortable, and silky-soft – I’m already enjoying wearing it:

What’s Next?

This project has convinced me that I really can make non-embarrassing wearable clothes for myself, so I really want to make more, but, with my hand problems, I need to save most of my crochet time for designs I can publish. For that reason, I’ll probably be knitting more clothes than I crochet in future: knitting uses different motions, so I can knit and crochet for far longer than I could just crochet.

I’m really glad to have made a crocheted garment that isn’t stiff, boxy or unflattering – I love crochet and I want to make it clear that, although you’ll be seeing me make more knitted sweaters in future, I’ll never abandon crochet in favour of knitting. If any knitting snobs think I’m knitting clothes because knitting is superior to crochet, I’ll be able to point to this cardigan as evidence to the contrary!

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 🙂