PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

Here’s my latest commissioned design – say hello to my Sea Otter!

This pattern is a little later than scheduled, I’m afraid; I just wasn’t able to write up the pattern until I got over my bronchitis enough to have a clear head. Turning the new techniques I use to create my designs into clear and easy to follow instructions is impossible when my brain isn’t fully functional. But hopefully you’ll agree that it was worth the wait 🙂

I’ve wanted to make a sea otter for years – they are truly adorable. Have you seen pictures of a pair floating together, holding hands?! Awwww!

Sea Otter fun facts

• Sea Otters are both the smallest marine mammal and the largest member of the weasel family.
• Their fur is the densest of any animal and traps a layer of insulating air bubbles within it to keep the otter warm in the cold ocean waters.
• Sea otters almost never leave the ocean. They float on their backs to rest, groom and sleep.
• Their diet is shellfish and crustaceans. They often use a rock as a tool to crack open the hard shells.
• They have special kidneys that allow them to drink sea water and process out the salt!

To help with my design, I made a list of essential sea otter features:

• Sea otters have small sensitive front paws that let then catch their food by touch.
• To aid in swimming, their back feet are large, flat and webbed, and their tails are broad and strong.
• Their colour varies from beige to very dark brown, and the fur on their heads lightens with age.
• They have a diamond shaped nose and small ears. They can close their nostrils and ears when underwater.

I hope the sea otter’s playful nature has come through in my design – especially in the back feet! I think sea otters really need to have something to hold on their tummies for maximum cuteness, so I’ve also included a bonus pattern to make the simple clam you can see in my photos – you can make the closed and/or open (empty) version.

If you pledged towards the commission, you should have already received your copy of the pattern. Otherwise, if you’d like to make a sea otter of your own – or a pair to hold hands – you can now pick up the Sea Otter crochet pattern from the PlanetJune shop!

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

The 2012 Olympic Games, and the yarny Ravellenic Games, have now drawn to a close. I’d like to salute all the members of Team PlanetJune, for participating through competing and/or cheerleading.

Team PlanetJune roll call: abjCrochet, AKmtnnymph, AliciaLee418, anda76, arbitrarily, BanuyeGharbi, BettyH553, BiologyJAP, BryansMummy, camaharet, celloulee, CrochetChrisie, CrochtColorJunkie, Emzibee, Enphra, esmerelda33, Fatals-attraction, Foxtrot400, Grendy05, haleysuzanne, hattalahutta, Heidi, HotPinkCrayola, JennHanus, jukatca, JRPautos, klopferli, Luna1130, MintSauce, MorganAdel, petrOlly, planetjune, PinkytheLizard, PixyKayte, rastakt, robinandersen9, saudistitcher, SugarAngel, taliasparkle, theMarkofSMB, themegababe, tripleb, Veggie, vshopmeyer, yaney, yasminlangley

Team PlanetJune Medals:

Overall, we attained 90 medals in 16 different events – an amazing achievement!

Photo Gallery

I’ll show you my entries first so I can explain them quickly. The Kingfisher is a replacement for my original that was lost after I sent it to be photographed by a magazine. I’m so glad to have finally had a chance to remake him:

And my other entries were new designs: the (as yet unnamed) scarf will be a new PlanetJune Accessories donationware pattern next month, and the Sea Otter is a commissioned design (pattern coming very soon!):

Here are all the other team entries – notice how people have challenged themselves through quantity of projects, making more advanced accessories, completing old WIPs, or modifying my patterns to include beading, felting, miniaturising, and more…

Luna1130 & hattalahutta

PinkytheLizard & theMarkofSMB

hattalahutta & theMarkofSMB

CrochetChrisie & HotPinkCrayola

Fatals-attraction & CrochetChrisie

theMarkofSMB & petrOlly

CrochetChrisie & AKmtnnymph

Fatals-attraction & CrochetChrisie

theMarkofSMB & abjCrochet

arbitrarily & Enphra

CrochetChrisie & hattalahutta

arbitrarily & tripleb

tripleb & Fatals-attraction

PinkytheLizard & theMarkofSMB

rastakt & theMarkofSMB

theMarkofSMB & SugarAngel

CrochetChrisie & BettyH553

theMarkofSMB & themegababe

petrOlly & petrOlly

Fatals-attraction & theMarkofSMB

CrochetChrisie & Fatals-attraction

CrochetChrisie & klopferli

camaharet & PinkytheLizard

petrOlly & theMarkofSMB

yaney & petrOlly

petrOlly & jukatca

theMarkofSMB & Fatals-attraction

themegababe & BettyH553

Veggie, CrochetChrisie & PinkytheLizard

BanuyeGharbi, MorganAdel & Luna1130

yaney, BiologyJAP & CrochetChrisie

Isn’t that an impressive collection? (Both in terms of quality and quantity: remember, these were all made within the just over 2 week timeframe…) Excellent work, team! 🙂

Prizes!

Thanks to Michelle of Suncatcher Eyes for sponsoring Team PlanetJune! In addition to her beautiful handpainted eyes, Michelle carries a full range of high quality black and clear animal eyes for your amigurumi.

All eligible projects were entered in the draw, and the six winners are:

• $10 gift certificate for the PlanetJune shop: PinkyTheLizard
• A free pattern of your choice from PlanetJune: hattalahutta, klopferli
• 10 pairs of eyes (your choice of colours and sizes) from Suncatcher Eyes: theMarkofSMB
• 5 pairs of eyes (your choice of colours and sizes) from Suncatcher Eyes: petrOlly, SugarAngel

Congratulations to the winners – I’ll rav PM you to sort out your prizes!

All other Team PJ members with projects pictured above will receive the runner-up prize of a PlanetJune discount coupon (I’ll send it as a rav PM, so look out for it there!)

I’m sure the whole team would also like to extend a special thanks to our co-Captain, CrochetChrisie, who helped answer everyone’s questions about the Ravellenic Games rules and took the pressure off me – there’s no way I could have managed the admin for this by myself! To show my gratitude, I’m awarding Chrisie with a surprise gift – Chrisie, it’ll be in the mail shortly 🙂

Competing for medals in the Ravellenic Games was fun, but a little stressful too! If you’d like to participate in a more relaxed no-pressure crochet-along, join us in the PlanetJune Ravelry group for the BotaniCAL from now until the end of September – we’re crocheting beautiful flowers, plants and fruit…

Posy Blossoms is my latest donationware crochet pattern for you! What began as an idea to make a tiny basic flower shape expanded until I had a set of seven different sweet miniature flowers with two leaf designs. As they all go together perfectly, you can mix, match, stack and combine endlessly to create floral embellishments perfect for any situation.

Make them in your favourite colours, or themed colours to match decor or occasion. (Thinking ahead, don’t you agree that dark green leaves with white and/or red blossoms would make beautiful winter/Christmas decorations..?) You can make each blossom in one or two colours, and stack the smaller blossoms on the larger ones in the same or contrasting colours.

Each tiny component takes only minutes (or less!) to crochet. The sizes vary from approx 0.75-1.5″ (2-4cm) diameter when worked in worsted weight yarn, and of course you could miniaturise them further with finer yarn and an appropriately smaller hook.

Use a single flower to embellish a hairclip, stitch two or three to a bag or purse, or combine your favourites into a larger posy for a brooch or pin. Stitch them around the neckline of a t-shirt or cardigan, embellish a photo frame, decorate your amigurumi, create floral crocheted jewellery… The only limit is your imagination!

Above and below, you can see one example of how I used this pattern (3 x blossom A with the optional knotted centre, plus 1 x double leaf I) to make a sweet forget-me-not posy hair clip:

As always, the 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.

I hope you’ll enjoy this pattern – I can’t wait to see how you use it! I’m hoping we’ll see a huge range of embellishments, accents and decorations, all made using unique combinations and colour schemes.

Go to Posy Blossoms pattern >>

Crochet Along with us!

The new PlanetJune Crochet-Along is an extended BotaniCAL, taking us through from now until the end of September. The botanic theme, chosen by the members of my ravelry group, covers all my flower, plant and fruit patterns, so this is the perfect chance to start creating with my new Posy Blossoms pattern, and to be inspired by how other people are using it!

PlanetJune Botanicals patterns – find them all in the Flowers & Plants section of my shop.

(By the way, although the Ravellenic Games have now ended, the Team PlanetJune roundup and prize drawing will be later this week, as there’s a 24 hour grace period for posting projects to the finish lines and I don’t want to omit anyone from the roundup post or from receiving their contest entries.)

Please join us at the BotaniCAL thread in the PlanetJune Ravelry group if you’d like to crochet Posy Blossoms – or any other PlanetJune Botanicals – along with us!

What’s going on chez PlanetJune? Things seem quiet here lately for a combination of reasons. Getting bronchitis has upset my plans a bit (e.g. no July video tutorial as I can’t really talk at the moment without coughing or wheezing), but I’ve also been working on lots of things that just aren’t quite ready yet, so good things are coming! Here’s a little peek at some of my upcoming designs:

• A new shawl design just needs cover photos and then it’ll be ready to launch
• A new floral donationware pattern with accompanying crochet-along – coming very soon
• I’ve been working on a scarf during the Ravellenic Games which will become another new donationware pattern
• The commissioned Sea Otter pattern is in the works (and looking very cute so far)
• I’ve started crocheting another new shawl design – it’s beautiful so far but it’s going to be very large, so it’ll be a longer-term project for me
• And I have a few other fun secret projects which I’m not ready to share yet… (If the photo above looks surprisingly short on amigurumi, that’s why – don’t worry, I’m not abandoning my animal designs!)

So I’m not just sitting around feeling sick and sorry for myself (although there may be a bit of that going on too) – I need to keep taking things slowly until I can breathe properly again, but I’m still making progress on things, and I will have exciting new patterns for you soon 🙂

Review and Win contest

August’s ‘Review and Win’ winner is Aleksandra S, with her Succulent Collection 2 review:

** This review is only for the string of pearls and the small pot as I didn’t make anything else yet **

Stunning and very realistic result, very quick & easy pattern. I want to make more strings of pearls now 🙂

After only reading the tutorial / looking at the photos:
I was amazed how June managed the colourful pattern on top of the living stones – it’s so easy and ingenious! I would like to say I was pleasantly surprised but the quality is just great as always 🙂

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

To be entered into this month’s draw for a free pattern of your choice, just write a review of any product in my shop – thank you!

In the UK, there’s a TV ad campaign for an energy company featuring a character called Zingy. It’s a hugely popular series of commercials, but there’s no official Zingy merchandise available (yet).

Zingy character and photo copyright Beatbots LLC, for EDF Energy commercials.

My sister is a big fan so I told her I’d make her a Zingy. Of course, I had no craft supplies with me, so I had to buy everything I needed locally – quite a challenge on the tiny island of Jersey! The best I could manage was DK weight yarn, a 3mm tapered hook (as far as I could tell, there are no in-line hooks available in the UK…), fibrefill, and some black and white felt. Here’s what I came up with:

My crocheted Zingy fan art. I’m not licensed to produce a pattern for the Zingy character, so please don’t ask me for one!

Considering the constraints, I think he turned out well, and the recipient is happy, so that’s the main thing 🙂

I also had a chance to solve a problem using crochet: my sister had a dress with plastic rings connecting the bodice to the straps, but one of the rings had broken. The only way to replace the ring would be to unpick the stiching on the bodice loop and the strap, and re-stitch them around a new ring. And then I had the idea to crochet a ring directly, with no need to unpick any stitching. I bought some embroidery floss in a complementary colour, made a magic ring that passed through both strap loops, and crocheted over it, rotating it as I crocheted so the straps didn’t get in the way.

Of course, I had to replace both rings so both sides of the dress would match, but it only took a few minutes to crochet each replacement ring, and it ended up looking prettier than with the original plastic rings:

Close-up of new rings attaching the adjustable straps to the dress bodice, crocheted from embroidery thread.

I had packed yarn and hook to create my next crochet lace shawl design while I was away, but I didn’t even get halfway through it as I only worked on it during my flights and on one evening. But that’s okay – I can still look forward to finishing the shawl (I’m planning to do a beaded edging), and I’m glad I could do a little helpful crochet while I was visiting my family!

I’m back from visiting my family! It was lovely to see them, but, wanting to make the most of my rare time with my parents, sister, and brother-in-law, I didn’t slow down when I got first a sore throat and then a cold, and as a result I’ve ended up with full-blown bronchitis (not much fun). Now I have to try to recover while trying to catch up on everything from the last week, but it was worth it to have some special family time 🙂

I haven’t had a chance yet to remind you about the Ravellenic Games, which start tomorrow! If you’d like to challenge yourself to crochet anything from any of my patterns, there’s still time to join Team PlanetJune and compete along with us to complete crochet projects and earn medals during the timeframe of the Olympic Games.

Prizes!

If you complete one or more events for Team PlanetJune, you’ll be entered into the draw to win special prizes from PlanetJune and Suncatcher Eyes.

There are a total of six prizes on offer:

• $10 gift certificate for the PlanetJune shop (1 winner)
• A free pattern of your choice from PlanetJune (2 winners)
• 10 pairs of eyes (your choice of colours and sizes) from Suncatcher Eyes (1 winner)
• 5 pairs of eyes (your choice of colours and sizes) from Suncatcher Eyes (2 winners)

And all other medalling (not meddling!) Team PJ members will receive the runner-up prize of a PlanetJune discount coupon – there are no losers here 😀

Events

There are lots of Events you can participate in (and we have a handy events’ list for the ones that are applicable for Team PlanetJune), but I thought I’d give you a couple of examples with the projects I’m hoping to medal in:

WIPs Wrestling
RULE: not touched since May 15 2012; projects can’t cross compete in other events

As my original amigurumi kingfisher unfortunately went MIA after being photographed for a certain magazine, I’ve been wanting to crochet a replacement. I started last year, but I’ve been so busy since then that I haven’t had a chance to work on it for months, so the Ravellenic Games will be the perfect opportunity (and incentive) to get him finished.

I don’t think I’ve touched this kingfisher project bag since 2011!

Toy Toss
I won’t be crocheting any other existing PlanetJune patterns for the games, but this is the event category you can use for all my amigurumi! There is no design event, so I’ll be entering my next commissioned design, the Sea Otter, in the Toy Toss event too. To medal in this event, my challenge to myself will be to complete the actual design and sample otter, and not necessarily to publish the pattern by the end of the games (there’s no point in including the pattern writing in the challenge, as I need the instructions to be clear and perfect, and I can’t rush that).

Synchronized Stash Busting
RULE: use only stash yarn that is over a year old

You can qualify for the stashbusting event with a project that’s already entered in another event, so my Sea Otter design will also qualify here, as I originally bought yarn with a sea otter design in mind in 2008 (as part of an AquaAmi Set 2 that I never finished). I just never got around to actually designing it until it was commissioned – one of the reasons I love my new commissions process! But the yarn is still sitting in my stash, ready to go.

Some, but not all, of these yarn colours will be turned into a cute sea otter…

Training
We’re not allowed to start our projects until the Olympic opening ceremony (9pm tomorrow, UK time, i.e. 3PM Eastern, noon Pacific), but training (i.e. research, swatching, choosing yarns, etc) is allowed! So I’ll be relaxing on the sofa with my laptop and trying to get this bronchitis under control while training for the Toy Toss by doing lots of sea otter research. It’ll be fun – sea otters are totally adorable and I’m looking forward to learning more about them, to make sure my design will be perfect.

I’ll also be hunting through my big yarn stash bags to see if I can locate the cream colour I had bought for my otter’s face. Otherwise I’ll just give him a light taupe face instead, which is fine – sea otters’ faces lighten with age, so mine can just be a younger one 😉

Join us?

We’ll all be cheering each other on with our projects, so if you’d like some added motivation to help you crochet something special over the next couple of weeks, please join Team PlanetJune – we’d love to have you, and you may win a prize too! You can join at any time during the games, which end on August 12th, so don’t worry if you miss the opening ceremonies tomorrow.

It’ll be fun to see how many medals we can amass between us by the end of the games. Go Team PlanetJune!

This post comes to you from beautiful Jersey, where I’m visiting my parents at the moment. My chair and I are actually on different continents right now, but I finished making this cover and took the photos before I left on my travels…

You may remember that the only way I was able to fix my badly-ripped office chair seat was with ugly frankenstitches:

I fixed the rip, but it’s certainly not pretty…

I decided to crochet a quick seat cover to hide the unsightliness. I picked a stitch pattern from a Japanese stitch pattern book and looked through my stash for some suitable yarn. I decided on Loops & Threads Impeccable – it feels hard and tough compared with the soft acrylics I usually use, so I’m hoping that means it’ll be hard-wearing too. I picked black to match the chair, with a dark red accent to match my fireplace, and started crocheting…

This stitch pattern was really fun to crochet!

(These really aren’t my colours, but working from stash means making compromises, and at least it matches the chair. Anyway, I won’t really see the finished cover much as I’ll be sitting on it almost all the time, so it doesn’t matter too much what it looks like – I just don’t want to see the ugly ‘scar’ from the giant rip any more!)

My one skein of black Impeccable just covered the seat top, with no yardage left over to crochet the side edges to keep it in place. I thought I’d use up some dark grey Impeccable for those, but at the first fitting I realised that wasn’t going to work:

Yuck!

So I sacrificed some of my precious Vanna’s Choice so I could redo the sides in black, and I ended up with this:

Much better!

A few details:

A custom-curved side at the front helps the top piece fit over the curved front of the cushion and stay in place.

I crocheted extra tabs at the back to tuck into the very tight space between the back and seat cushions (left: untucked tab; right: wedged into place). The tabs hold it all very firmly in place without visible ties.

And the end result is a nicely fitted cover:

It fits like a glove!

This was a satisfyingly fast project to complete, and it’s really nice to be able to use my crochet powers for good (I mean, to solve a problem by making something I actually need). The finished seat cover is a big improvement over the frankenstitches, and now I’m saved from buying an expensive new chair – mission accomplished! 🙂

This extended 6-week CAL was a Free-For-All, so participants had free choice to make any PlanetJune patterns they wanted (amigurumi, accessories, free patterns, patterns from my book). It’s interesting that with 120 patterns to choose from, you can see some definite trends in what people chose to crochet, but also loads of variety.

Now it’s time for me to take a short break while I visit my parents.

The next CAL will be the Ravellenic Games, from July 27th to August 12th. I’d like to invite you to join Team PlanetJune! (See the end of this post for more details.)