PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

Today I have a new PlanetJune Accessories donationware pattern for you: the Frosty Windows Scarf. With a pretty but easy-to-memorise stitch pattern, you can work up this scarf in almost any yarn. Once you’ve crocheted a couple of repeats, you’ll fly through it – it’s a perfect pattern for handmade gifts or for stashbusting!

Work it in any weight yarn – although I’d recommend DK weight (#3 light) or heavier for a snuggly scarf – with an appropriately sized hook. As with all my accessory patterns, this pattern has both written instructions and stitch diagrams, and it also includes full instructions for increasing the length and width if you’d like to make a wrap or shawl version!

As always with my donationware, the Frosty Windows Scarf pattern is free for your use, but if you’d like to send me a donation towards it (completely optional), you’ll receive the nicely formatted and easy-to-print PDF version of the pattern as a thank you. As a bonus, the PDF also includes some additional exclusive info:

• Step by step photo tutorial for the ‘tr2tog over next 5 st’
• How to calculate how much fringe you’ll need
• Step by step photos for making and attaching the fringe

I hope you’ll enjoy crocheting this scarf for yourself, and maybe you’ll make a few extras as Christmas gifts for friends and family?

Go to Frosty Windows Scarf pattern >>

Crochet Along with us!

Please share photos of scarves you’ve made from this pattern in the Accessory-Along CAL in the PJ ravelry group. We’ll be crocheting accessories from now until the end of the year, so you have plenty of time to join in and make even the largest, most ambitious accessory projects – or maybe multiples of the faster ones to give as gifts…

You can find all these patterns in the PlanetJune Accessories section of my shop.

Please join us at the Accessory-Along thread in the PlanetJune Ravelry group if you’d like to crochet a Frosty Windows Scarf – or any other PlanetJune Accessories – along with us!

This extended 6-week CAL was a BotaniCAL including all my patterns that fit the botanic theme (flowers, plants, fruits etc):

For October, the Ravelry group have decided to have two CALs: the main Accessory-Along, and a bonus Halloween CAL. (If you’d like to take part in one – or both! – see the end of this post for more details.)

Continuing with my plan to make video tutorials for every essential amigurumi technique, here’s the latest one: the Ultimate Finish. This is the neatest way to fasten off and close the remaining hole when you’ve finished crocheting a piece of amigurumi. Together with the invisible decrease, you’ll be able to make the bottom of your amigurumi look almost as neat as the top, with a smooth, gap-free base.

(If you already know this technique, you can skip this video, if you like – there’s nothing extra that I didn’t show you in my original ultimate finish photo tutorial – it’s just another addition to my essential crochet tutorials video library.)

And now to the video tutorial (in right- and left-handed versions, of course):

Ultimate Finish for Amigurumi (right-handed)

Click to watch this video on YouTube.

Ultimate Finish for Amigurumi (left-handed)

Click to watch this video on YouTube.

Note: The videos may look a little small embedded in the blog: if so, you can fullscreen them or click through to YouTube to watch them full-sized 🙂

If you enjoy my crochet tutorial videos, please help to spread the word about them, and/or subscribe to the PlanetJune YouTube channel. And let me know if you have any requests for crochet techniques you’d like me to explain in a future video tutorial!

Loved this tutorial? I have so many more amigurumi tips and tricks to share with you!

Boost your amigurumi skills with my latest book, The Essential Guide to Amigurumi, your comprehensive guide to amigurumi techniques and tips.

Do you find my tutorials helpful? If so, please consider making a contribution towards my time so I can continue to create clear and concise tutorials for you:

Thank you so much for your support! Now click below for loads more crochet video and photo tutorials (and do let me know what else you’d like me to cover in future tutorials…)

With the Accessory-Along crochet-along about to begin on October 1st, this was perfect timing for me to launch my latest PlanetJune Accessories design, the Rippled Lace Rectangular Shawl. Two harmonising shades of yarn undulate together to create a beautiful gossamer-fine shawl with airy lightness and amazing drape.

The lace pattern has a 2-row repeat, so you’ll pick it up in no time and be able to enjoy crocheting without having to worry about a complicated pattern. The clever stitch pattern is worked continuously from 2 balls of yarn; there’s no fastening off between stripes, or lengths of stranded yarn to worry about hiding. You can even omit the edging and the shawl will still look good!

My lace patterns are designed to be worked with normal-sized hooks into the spaces between stitches, which means that, after the foundation row, there’s no hunting for those tiny fine loops to work into, and they are a pleasure to work.

As always, I include full instructions for modifying the size of the shawl in both length and width – you can make it as narrow as a scarf, or as wide as a blanket, and the length is only determined by how long you want it (and how much yarn you have available).

My shawl uses an entire 400m/50g skein of the main darker colour, and 86% of the contrast colour skein – you can see that it’s very long and a shorter version would still be ample for most people. I used a laceweight baby alpaca yarn (KnitPicks Alpaca Cloud in Foxtrot Heather and Iris Heather) which is surprisingly warm, even with such an open lacy design – I’m really going to enjoy wearing this!

The Rippled Lace Rectangular Shawl is a versatile pattern; here are a few modification suggestions to get you started:

• Use contrasting colours of yarn to punch up the ‘wow’ factor of the rippled stripe effect.
• Work the design in a heavier yarn (fingering weight/sock yarns would look lovely) to give a more substantial shawl with more warmth and coverage.
• Omit the edging, or edge with a third colour, and you’ll be able to make the most of your 2 skeins of yarn in the shawl body.
• For a faster project, make a narrower scarf-width version.

I hope you’ll enjoy this shawl as much as I do! You can buy the Rippled Lace Rectangular Shawl pattern individually from my shop, or buy it as part of a custom set of any three PlanetJune Accessories designs for a bargain price.

If you’re not quite ready to buy though, how about queuing it on ravelry so you don’t forget about it?

If you’d like to make this shawl, or any of my other accessory designs, I hope you’ll join us in the PlanetJune Ravelry group for the Accessories crochet-along. The CAL officially starts on October 1st, but if you can’t wait to get going, feel free to start crocheting early!

I finished my new PlanetJune Accessories shawl design in June. The pattern was ready, the stitch diagrams were ready, the blocked and beautiful sample was ready. Only one thing remained to do before I could publish it: the cover photos.

I don’t feel comfortable here walking around by myself in a dress, carrying a (relatively) expensive camera on a tripod, and posing for photos with my back to the camera while hoping nobody is walking off with it at that very moment. I always felt safe doing that in Canada, but here it just feels like a stupid risk, and so the months ticked by with no shawl pattern…

The only solution I could see was to give up on trying for beautiful scenery – after all, the main focus of my pattern cover photos should be the shawl, not the background – and take the photos in the safety and privacy of my garden. But our garden is a scrappy mess: we’re both very busy, and gardening isn’t a high priority for either of us. (Plus, the birds and butterflies and geckos and chameleons seem to be very happy with the garden’s current state. It’s not a mess: it’s a natural wildlife garden!)

One particular wall in the garden was the most promising candidate for photos – it’s tall, wide, interestingly textured… and a complete mess. Flaking paint in 2 or 3 colours, bare areas, lichens and general grime made for a horrible dirty-looking background – not exactly the look I want people to associate with my beautiful accessories! So I gave myself a weekend project to fix up this wall:

I scraped off all the loose paint and other bits with a wire brush, then scrubbed the entire wall with a bleach solution to get rid of the dirt and lichen. As there were areas with no paint or primer, I used an exterior primer to cover the whole surface (very slow going on such a heavily textured surface) and bring it up to bright white:

And then I rolled on a coat of custom-tinted exterior paint. I chose this shade of green because it’s a fairly natural, neutral colour. It should also be easy to tweak in post-processing to make it yellower, brighter green, or grey, so I can customize the backdrop for each photoshoot.

After the paint dried, I can see it has some thin areas where the colour looks paler, so it’ll need a second coat at some point. But this was a good enough finish to finally take my shawl photos – phew!

Now I’ll have plenty of photography opportunities with beautiful natural lighting in my new outdoor studio: a couple of hours of shade in the mornings before the sun peeks over the wall; late afternoons once the sun has hidden behind the mountain; plus any time the sky is cloudy-but-bright. And now I don’t need to travel to get my shots, I don’t need to worry that the weather will change while I’m en route!

This may seem like an expensive and time-consuming solution (the paint wasn’t cheap, and it took a long time to prep and prime the wall), but, given my circumstances, I think this photo-studio-in-the-garden makes a lot of sense. It isn’t perfect – of course I’d prefer beautiful scenic views to a blank wall – but at this stage I don’t have the time to hunt for locations or the energy to deal with the stress and worry involved in trying to set up and photograph there. My choices were to abandon my Accessories range simply because getting cover photos was proving too difficult, or go for a compromise. I love creating new Accessories designs, so being able to take the photos in my own garden is definitely the best solution for my current situation.

A little teaser for the new pattern…

I think it’s really important to try to make the best of things and accept that not everything can be exactly the way you’d like it to be in an ideal world. Moving to Cape Town required some major adjustments, in my personal life, of course, but also in my business life. I’ve been here for well over a year now and I’m still struggling with some aspects of maintaining PlanetJune from a different continent – for example, just acquiring worsted weight yarn for new amigurumi designs is no easy task – so anything I can do to simplify my life and my business practices is worth it. In the end, I know what my priorities are: I can compromise on my photo backgrounds, but not on my pattern quality – and I don’t think anyone could argue with that decision!

And now I’m relieved and delighted to finally be able to say: look out for a beautiful new PlanetJune Accessories pattern, launching tomorrow! 😀

Looking for options for eyes and noses? Or online eye sources? If not, read on:

Judging the best eye positions for amigurumi is a skill that doesn’t come easily to most people. I know from talking to my customers that it can be very frustrating when you’ve worked hard to make an amigurumi but it ends up with an unusual looking face and you’re not quite sure why…

Examples of eye positions for a realistic amigurumi dog

Before you permanently attach amigurumi eyes, as well as checking that the eyes are level with each other and not wonky, it’s also worth playing with them to make sure they are in the position you like best. In my patterns, I give guidelines for positioning the facial features to look right for each animal, but I thought I’d give a little lesson today in facial proportion that will give you a place to start for any animal (including humans).

Tip: If you’re having problems with the eye positions for an animal with a separate muzzle, it can be helpful to attach the muzzle before positioning the eyes, or at least hold the muzzle up to the face so you can judge the eye placement more carefully. As you’ll see below, the muzzle and eye positions are often closely related.

Here are my rule-of-thumb guidelines for positioning eyes on your amigurumi animals to give a realistic result. They aren’t 100% accurate for every animal, but are generally a good starting point. This is useful to know even if you aren’t looking to create realistic animals: once you know what the realistic position should be, you can easily modify it to make your animal cuter in a cartoony or kawaii way.

Eye Height

The number one mistake that most people instinctively make is to place the eyes too high (see examples 1 and 3 above). In children’s drawings of people, the eyes are usually drawn about a third of the way down the head, and this perception generally carries through into adulthood unless you’ve studied art or anatomy. Here are some rules-of-thumb to remember:

• Place the eyes roughly halfway up the head, or very slightly higher.
• If the animal has a muzzle, place the eyes level with the top of the muzzle.

Let’s look at these principles in action with photos of myself and my helpful assistant Maui, and then see how they look in amigurumi:

The top and bottom blue lines mark the top and bottom of the head. The middle blue line is halfway between them. You can see that the eyes are always at, or slightly above, the middle blue line, and the top of the muzzle (or ‘nose’ in my case!) is also at that same level.

Eye Spacing

This is more variable: some animals have forward-facing eyes, while others have sideways-facing eyes. A pattern should tell you if you need to place the eyes on either side of the head (i.e. facing out to each side), like these:

In these cases, the exact positioning is less critical, but, as you can’t easily see both eyes at once, check your animal from both the front and the top to make sure the eyes are level both horizontally and vertically before you commit to attaching the backs of your safety eyes.

If the eyes aren’t sideways-facing, there’s more chance of a positioning error. Here are the rules-of-thumb to avoid spacing problems:

• The most common mistake is to place the eyes too close together (see examples 2 and 3 at the top of this post) – this will give your animal a confused or cross-eyed look, which doesn’t (usually) look cute. The centres of the eyes should always be separated by at least half the width of the face.
• If the animal has a muzzle, place the eyes approximately level with each edge of the muzzle.

Let’s see some examples of these principles too:

General Spacing:

Here the blue lines show the centre of each eye, and the green lines show the edges of the face. Note the spacing between the eyes (the distance between the blue lines) is never less than half the width of the face (the distance between the green lines).

Muzzles:

Here the blue lines show the approximate eye spacing, which is also equal to the width of the muzzle. (I obviously don’t have a muzzle, but my eyes are spaced apart by the width of my nose, so the principle still applies!)

Adding Cuteness

Of course, you don’t have to aim for the most realistic result – you can modify the general principles to give your animals a cuter, more cartoony look. The simplest way to go from realistic to extra-cute is to use larger eyes than recommended. You can also try positioning the eyes a little lower and/or the nose a little higher. (Taking this to extremes, the Japanese ‘kawaii’ look often places the nose higher than the eyes, but you don’t have to go that far to get a cute result!)

Go and Play!

Just to be clear: it’s never wrong if you choose to make your ami differently; it’s only a problem if you’re not happy with the end result. Avoiding unhappiness is what I’m trying to achieve with these ‘rules’, but, as I said at the start, they’re only general guidelines. If a pattern has different instructions for eye placement, you should follow those instead. And, of course, if you prefer the look of the eyes in a different position, you should always feel free to do things differently.

Eyes are so important to the look of the finished amigurumi – they give it expression and personality. Positioning the eyes so their animals look their best can be tricky, and I hope the guidelines in this post will help reduce that frustration. If you haven’t been happy with your amigurumis’ faces in the past, hopefully you’ll now have an idea where you may have been going wrong, so you can try a different eye placement next time.

Take an extra minute to make sure you’re happy with your ami’s eyes before you commit to the placement: it can make all the difference between an ami that’s just not quite right and one you can be proud of!

Loved this tutorial? I have so many more amigurumi tips and tricks to share with you!

Boost your amigurumi skills with my latest book, The Essential Guide to Amigurumi, your comprehensive guide to amigurumi techniques and tips.

Do you find my tutorials helpful? If so, please consider making a contribution towards my time so I can continue to create clear and concise tutorials for you:

Thank you so much for your support! Now click below for loads more crochet video and photo tutorials (and do let me know what else you’d like me to cover in future tutorials…)

It’s amazing how quickly time flies – it’s been over a year since my last AmiDogs design (the Basset Hound who accompanies my amigurumi Columbo) but, thanks to my Commissions system, it’s time to add to the collection with my 20th dog crochet pattern, AmiDogs Rottweiler.

With 19 dog breed designs under my belt, I thought I must have a pretty good idea of how to design a dog crochet pattern by now, but it was still a challenge to capture the Rottie’s essence. I had to set it aside for a while and work on something else until I figured out the subtle changes in shape that would make the design work. I think I finally nailed it though 🙂

Here are the other 19 AmiDogs breeds:

Don’t forget, if your favourite(s) are still missing, you can commission them! I’ve just added the most popular requests to the commission options, if you’d like to pledge towards any of them. If your favourites aren’t on the list, please submit your requests (through the form on the Commissions page) so I can consider adding them in the next design review. I no longer create new AmiDogs designs without a commission, so this is the only way to get your favourites made from now on.

If you know someone who loves Rottweilers, you can pick up the AmiDogs Rottweiler 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.

Thanks to everyone who commissioned me to make this design! Next up on the commissions list: the Giant Panda (I’ll be collecting pledge monies tomorrow) – yay!

Look what I made!

This was my second ever knitting project, after the wristwarmers I made last year. I lost my knitting momentum as I waited 3 months for the needles I’d ordered to arrive in South Africa, and found it very difficult to pick it back up again, especially as my plan was pretty daunting: to make a cardigan from scratch with no pattern.

Actually, the plan was for 2 cardigans, one knit and one crochet, as relaxation projects to keep me occupied outside working hours so I don’t end up working all the time. Although the crocheted cardigan was much faster to create (I finished it in July), I haven’t quite finished weaving in the ends on that one, so the knitted one gets to make its debut first 🙂

Self-designed knitted and crocheted cardigans in progress

When I finally decided to make a start on the cardigan project in June, I measured some of my existing clothes to give me an idea of size and then just started with the back of each, with no real idea of what to do after that. My plan with this knitted cardigan was to make it a learn-as-I-go piece: picking up new knitting skills along the way as I needed them, and hopefully ending up with something wearable too; or at the very least a good idea for how to make the next one good enough to wear without embarrassment. And, somewhat to my surprise, this strategy worked!

Project Details

Yarn: Bernat Satin in Forest Mist Heather

I bought 6 skeins of this yarn at a yarn factory outlet sale in 2010. One became my Diamond Lattice Neckwarmer, so I had 5 left, and I hoped that would be enough. (If not, my plan was to add some stripes of a different colour near the edges.) As it turned out, I only needed 3.7 skeins – less than 700m of yarn – so that’ll be handy to keep in mind for my next sweater.

Needles: KnitPicks interchangeables, 5mm, with 2×24″ and 2×32″ cables

I’m really enjoying these KnitPicks needles. I have the nickel-plated tips and they’re lovely and smooth and very easy to knit with (not that I have anything to compare them with). I made full use of the interchangeable needle tips and cables with this cardigan:

• I held each piece on one of the spare cables until it was time to join them together. To start the next piece, I switched the needle tips to a different cable and screwed the stoppers on each end of the old cable.
• I used cable connectors to make extra-long cables and to join the cables temporarily so I could slide my live stitches from one cable to another.

At some points I had all 4 of my cables in use; I think I’ll need to invest in some more, and longer, cables before my next project.

Pattern: None! I made it up as I went along.

Maui volunteered to keep the finished cardigan held flat while it dried…

Techniques

Here’s my journey of new knitting skills:

Provisional cast-on: I decided to use a provisional cast-on (a crocheted chain made in a different yarn) to give me some flexibility with the length and put off the decision of how to edge the piece until I got further into the project (and hence a little more knitting practice).

Purl: As a cardigan is worked in rows, this was my first attempt at purling (my wristwarmers were worked in the round, so they only used the knit stitch). I made the body in one seamless piece, bottom up, up to the armholes, then set it aside to start the sleeves.

Increases: I knitted my first increases for the sleeves, using Knitting Help’s incredibly useful increase reference to pick the increases I liked best (M1L and M1R, in case you were wondering).

Mattress stitch: I had planned to knit the sleeves in the round as I did for my wristwarmers, but, after working flat, I couldn’t remember how I managed to knit in the round (with Magic Loop) without getting any ladders at either side – it had seemed so easy before! I decided to worry about that later and keep my momentum going by working the seams flat and learning how to stitch side seams invisibly with mattress stitch instead.

A little detour… After making most of the first sleeve, I basted it closed to make sure it was wide enough at the bicep. It turns out that, although my gauge calculations were spot on, the size of my arms is apparently a little wider than I’d thought, as the sleeve was going to fit very closely – not a very flattering look. I ripped it all out, added 20% to all my width calculations and started again…

Decreases: I joined the body and sleeves to make a raglan yoke. It was time to learn how to make left-leaning and right-leaning decreases, so I referred back to Knitting Help to choose my favourites (k2tog and SKP).

Kitchener stitch: After finishing the yoke, I had to stitch the sleeves to the body at the underarms, so it was time to learn how to stitch invisible horizontal seams with Kitchener stitch. I wish crocheted seams were this simple and invisible!

Ribbing: I decided a 1×1 rib might look nice for the edging (with the advantage that I’d then be able to try TECHknitting’s tubular cast-off that I had my eye on). (In the end, I decided against using it in the finished sweater – I just didn’t like the finished look of it, so I ripped the cuffs out and redid them later.)

Magic Loop (again): By the time I got to edging the cuffs, I’d already seamed the sleeves together, so working flat was no longer an option. I relearnt Magic Loop so I could complete the cuff edging in the round.

Tubular Cast-off: I really liked the idea of this cast-off because it has no edge to look messy (and as an added bonus, I got to learn double knitting as part of the technique). The instructions I used didn’t explain one crucial step (bring the yarn to the front before slipping the purl stitches; bring the yarn to the back before slipping the knit stitches) so it took me a while to figure out what I was doing wrong. In the end, although I did master the technique, I didn’t love the look, so I decided to lose the ribbing and tubular cast-off and try something with a cleaner look instead…

I-cord Cast-off: Did you know there are apparently infinite variants of how to do this? Knitting some, or all, of the stitches through the back loop, decrease with k2tog, ssk, or skp… Every tutorial and video I looked at had a slightly different method. I decided to try the KnitPicks tutorial (except with a provisional cast-on) and it looked fine, so I went with that method.

Picking up stitches: Edging the cuffs and bottom was easy – I just ripped out my provisional crocheted cast-on and continued knitting downwards from there. But, to make the collar edging and button band, I needed to pick up stitches along the side edge, so I could add an applied i-cord. My gauge was a perfect 18 sts and 24 rows in 4″ (exactly as the ball band of my yarn claimed!) so I picked up stitches on 3 of every 4 rows so my vertical edging wouldn’t pucker.

Buttonholes: I sort of cheated in my buttonholes: all I did was to not pick up the stitches at the points where I wanted the buttonholes to be, and worked the i-cord without attaching it for 3 rows to leave a vertical gap. I’ll have to learn a proper method in my next project!

Weaving in ends: Thanks to adding edgings, changing my mind, starting new balls of yarn, etc, I had a whopping 26 ends to weave in. Luckily, I already had an excellent tutorial bookmarked from The Purl Bee that clearly shows several different techniques. My favourite was duplicate stitch on the wrong side.

Finishing touches: I was hoping to find some decorative shank buttons to liven up the cardigan slightly, but when I went shopping I found a clear sign that wasn’t the way to go. These buttons cost 5c each (that’s less than 1 US cent apiece!) and amazingly were a perfect match for the greenish grey shade of my yarn. I used sewing thread to attach them, with a crochet hook as a spacer to make a thread shank, and small anchor buttons on the back so my thread wouldn’t cut through the yarn with wear. To finish it off, I knotted yarn all the way up each thread shank both to stop it from being floppy and to disguise the thread.

Perfect match! (This photo is untouched – the subtle heathered greenish grey of the yarn shows clearly here.)

Result

13 new knitting techniques learnt, and what do I have to show at the end of it all? A totally wearable cardigan!

Happy June says “I made this!”

It’s not perfect in terms of design: I forgot to start neck shaping while I was wrestling with the first few rows of the joined sleeves and body, so the V is a little shallower than I’d have preferred. Also, the i-cord isn’t quite enough to stop the stockinette from curling at the bottom, although it does stay fairly flat while I’m wearing it so I don’t think I’ll bother adding a facing to stabilise it.

But it fits very nicely, it doesn’t look embarrassingly ‘homemade’, and it’s been doing a great job of keeping me warm all week. And, in the end, isn’t that exactly what a cardigan should do?

Verdict

As a self-teaching tool, this project worked exactly as I’d hoped – I gradually, over the course of making the cardigan, taught myself a huge number of knitting techniques. If I’d tried to learn them all before tackling the project I’d probably have been too daunted to ever make a start on it. I had the advantage that I’ve read lots of knitting tutorials over the past few years, so, even though I didn’t know how to knit ahead of time, I did know the theory (e.g. you need to pair a left-leaning and right-leaning decrease; you use mattress stitch for a vertical seam and Kitchener stitch for a horizontal seam, etc) – so it was just a matter of googling each new technique as I needed it.

I had no doubt that I’d be able to do something like this in crochet, but designing a knitted cardigan when I didn’t even know how to purl before I started did seem like a bit of a crazy challenge… Knowing that I had a goal (a piece of wearable clothing) in mind kept me moving forward and trying new techniques in a far shorter amount of time than I would have managed to learn them otherwise.

I guess I can say I’ve graduated from the ‘beginner’ knitter category now? Plus, I have the added bonus of a nice warm cardigan that fits! And I suppose I could even call myself a knitwear designer now too, although strictly for fun, not profit 🙂