PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

This is the twelfth post in my monthly series on the fascinating nature I encounter here in South Africa.

That’s a whole year of photos, and so I think this is a good point to take a step back and make some changes…

I really enjoy sharing my photos with you, but the monthly deadline has added too much pressure to my overly-busy life, so, after today, I’m changing the format to an occasional series instead of a monthly one. That means I’ll be able to do a post when I have something amazing to show you and have the hours necessary to first choose and edit a handful of photos from the hundreds I’ve taken, and then research and write the accompanying text.

I know this decision will disappoint some people, but writing these posts has become more of a burden than a joy, and continuing like that makes no sense. One post a month doesn’t sound like much, but my business has me working through most of my waking hours at the moment: I need to do less, so I can reclaim my life. With the deadline pressure removed, I’ll be able to write my nature posts when I want to, and they’ll be better for it.

For my final monthly post, I’ve selected the most interesting photos I haven’t had a chance to show you yet, starting with one from today! We checked in on the penguin colony (see my previous photos here) and the first babies are hatching – African Penguins are endangered, so this is wonderful to see:

A fluffy African Penguin chick emerges from his burrow (left) into the rain, to be fed by one of his doting parents.

A couple of months ago, I saw, in the distance, a tiny antelope cross the road I was driving along, and noted where it had disappeared into the bushes. I pulled over when I reached that point, and discovered that it was grazing in full view a couple of metres back from the road! We’d have driven right past it if I hadn’t happened to see it and known where to stop and look:

This adorable mini antelope was easy to identify as a Cape Grysbok (male) – it looks exactly like all the Cape Grysbok photos I’ve seen online, which makes our Christmas mystery antelope even more of a mystery, as it’s clearly not the same species as this cute little guy…

Okay, now scroll down quickly if you hate giant bugs…

This grasshopper (in my garden) is absolutely enormous – at least 3″ long! Very interesting at a distance, but the time it flew directly at my face was not fun…

Okay, you’re safe, we’re back to cute now:

At first sight, we thought this was a chipmunk, but it’s actually a striped mouse (there aren’t any chipmunks here). Very cute!

We have access to such a variety of wildlife here, all within a couple of hours (or much less) from home. Both of these photos were taken less than half an hour’s drive from our house:

Not the greatest photo, but I hope you can just about see an adult (left) and 2 baby dolphins (back, front) in this photo.

And this is a terrible photo apart from the content: a real wild zebra! We’ve seen them a couple of times before, but only from the road, so this weekend I had my first opportunity to capture one with my camera (from a great distance, hence the photo quality), on the slopes of Table Mountain.

I’ll be aiming to get some better photos of both dolphins and zebras in time. If you’ve been avidly reading these posts, you may remember the sub-standard kingfisher photos I showed you a year ago. A tiny, lightning-fast, nervous bird is not easy to photograph, but, thanks to a bird hide, some patience, and figuring out the manual focus setting on my camera, I was finally able to take some good Malachite Kingfisher photos:

I think this is my favourite – not the most dignified shot, but I love how the tiny striped feathers on his head are blowing about in the wind!

Putting these posts together has been a lot of work, but also a nice record of our first year in South Africa. I’ll obviously never stop appreciating and photographing wildlife – both for fun and as inspiration for future designs – so I’m sure I’ll have more photos to show you soon as time permits.

At a bird sanctuary, I stroked a little wood owl! It was incredibly soft and fluffy.

As a grand finale to this year of nature appreciation, I thought you might like to see this time-lapse video I recorded of a spectacular sunrise over the city of Cape Town. I recorded it exactly one year ago today, but hadn’t found the time to edit it until now. This was taken from the apartment we lived in when we first arrived in South Africa, which, although cold and inconveniently situated miles from the observatory, had a spectacular view out over the city and harbour:

Maui liked the view too

Now we’ve exchanged the commute and the view for our own little house in the suburbs, a garden full of wildlife, and a beautiful river just down the road. It was a good trade, but I’m glad I have this video to remember the city sunrise by, and I hope you’ll enjoy watching it too:

Click through or full-screen it to see the full size version

Thank you for accompanying me through my year of nature photos – please leave me a comment if you’ve enjoyed this series!

Maui loves his double-wide corrugated cardboard scratchers – it’s the only type he’ll use. The pet shops here are tiny, with very little selection, and this type of scratcher doesn’t seem to be available anywhere. Luckily, we have an almost-infinite supply of boxes stored in our garage, which I kept after our move for just such thrifty/crafty purposes…

Maui supervises as I get to work

The flaps of the moving boxes just happen to be exactly the same width as the length of Maui’s old scratcher, so I kept the old outer box and cut 1.75″ strips of corrugated cardboard to make a new scratching surface. Measure, mark, cut, repeat… I needed 60 strips to fill the old outer box.

Measuring and cutting strips of cardboard

After that, I just ran a line of white glue along the centre of the length of each strip, stacked them all together, and applied pressure for a couple of minutes so they are all packed tightly together. Edge on, you have the perfect scratching surface for the demanding kitty:

As good as bought!

Cutting 60 strips was a lot more effort than I thought it would be – I had to split the task over several days, as my hand holding the ruler in position would start to ache after 5 or 10 strips. If I still had access to buy a new scratcher instead, I would. But, as I don’t, it’s worth a little hard work to make one for Maui every now and then.

This is the state of the old one – better that Maui does this to the cardboard than to our furniture!

As a bonus, it’s fully reversible, so when it looks like the photo above, I can just flip it over, and Maui will have another new scratching surface to decimate before I have to make another one.

After extensive quality control testing, Maui proclaims it totally scratch-worthy.

A happy cat = time well spent!

I have a new Crochet Quickies video for you today, showing how to make clean colour changes for amigurumi. This is the same basic technique I explain in my original Changing Colour tutorial (and you may also want to check out my tutorial Changing Colour: Managing the Yarns for my advice on what to do with all the yarn tails you end up with when you’re changing colour).

In this short video, I demo the colour change technique, and show you what happens if you don’t use this method!

Crochet Quickie: Changing Colour (right-handed)

Click to watch this video on YouTube.

Crochet Quickie: Changing Colour (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 🙂

Although I’m demoing with single crochet for amigurumi purposes, you can also use this technique with any other crochet stitches, to give cleaner colour changes. The trick is to always pull through the last loop of the stitch before the colour change with the new colour, no matter which crochet stitch you’re using.

(I’ve made this video now for a reason: you’ll need to know this as background info for a brand new exclusive crochet technique that I’ll be demonstrating in my next crochet video…)

If you enjoy my crochet tutorial videos, please help to spread the word about them, and/or subscribe to the PlanetJune YouTube channel.

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…)

Flattened shapes are a basic in amigurumi for creating rigid, flat elements like ears, beaks, wings, hands, feet, flower petals, leaves, etc. Here are a few examples from some of my patterns that use flattened shapes:

All these amigurumi use flattened pieces in different shapes and sizes (marked here by arrows). Clockwise from top left: flipper, petal, plate, ear, wing.

There seems to be some confusion about how to flatten the shapes after crocheting them (see the comments left on my Plumeria pattern for an example of this!) so I thought I’d spell it out with this tutorial so I can refer back to it whenever people email me for help in future.

For any shape that will be flattened, it’ll start out looking like a cone or cup shape. The exact shape and dimensions depend on the pattern and the required shape for the finished piece; it may be:

• very long and thin or short and wide
• pointy tip or rounded tip
• tube-shaped or cone-shaped or widening and then narrowing

… or something in between! Here are a few examples:

All the pre-flattened shapes in this picture have the magic ring on the left and the open edge on the right.

But, whatever the specific shape, it will always have the magic ring at the bottom, and an open edge (which you crochet around) at the top:

Before flattening – note how the open edge runs around the top and the magic ring is at the bottom.

When you flatten it, you’ll always bring the two sides of that open edge together:

Squash the front and back of the open edge together to flatten the piece.

And then continue to flatten the entire piece, right down to the magic ring.

All the flattened pieces from the top…

…and from the side. Note that, in these pictures, the magic rings are all still on the left, and the open edges on the right.

The magic ring will form the tip of the item (ear, petal etc), and you’ll stitch it to the base piece (head, flower, etc) by the open edge – which now looks like two parallel rows of stitches.

That’s all there is to it! I hope this clears up any remaining confusion about how to flatten and attach these pieces to your amigurumi.

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…)

Finally! 2 months after I announced my new logo, I’ve finally launched the new blog layout today. (If you’re reading this in a feed reader, please click through to get the full impact!)

Hopefully this won’t look too new and strange to you; the purpose of this redesign wasn’t to give my blog a new look, but to make it easier for you to use, and to incorporate the new logo.

Here’s the old look, as a quick reminder:

And here’s the new and improved version:

The new layout is slightly wider, which gave me space to add an extra sidebar down the left-hand side with quick links to the things people most often look for on my site. The actual sidebar contents are still in progress – I’d like to add some more prominent links to my Ravelry group and Flickr group, a link to an as-yet unwritten page for my crocheted art, and other things as and when I think of them – but that can wait until I have time.

I think the biggest improvement is to the header area. Gone is the ‘patchwork’ of images at the top that confused people into thinking they were all pictures of crochet patterns:

Now there’s just one large clear photo, but if you refresh the page (or click to a different page on the blog) you’ll see that the image changes – you get a random one each time – so it hopefully still gives a feel for the variety of my patterns.

The almost-invisible main menu located above the header is gone (did you ever even notice it was there?!), and these impossible-to-find text links in the sidebar (I finally realised that a heading called ‘Pages’ means nothing to non-bloggers!):

Ugh, big block of random text links (circled in blue)

All replaced by a more complete menu bar below the header. Everything you need to navigate my site is organised into drop-down menus, and there’s a more prominent Search box on the right.

I still have to redo the rest of PlanetJune to match the new blog design and make it all more useable, but that’ll take a lot longer – I’d anticipated I’d need 2 weeks to complete the blog redesign, and it’s taken 2 months! I also need to figure out a better way to organise my crochet tutorials – now I have lots of photo tutorials and a growing collection of video tutorials, I’m going to need to find a clearer way to present them to you. Piece by piece, I’ll keep working on it all in between everything else – my goal is to have it all completed by the end of the year.

But, for now, I hope you’ll at least find the blog much easier to navigate! I’ve built up a lot of excellent resources on my blog (crochet and craft tutorials, free patterns, videos, etc), but they aren’t much use if you can’t find them 🙂

I’m so busy these days that I rarely have any time for non-business-related crafting. In fact, I haven’t made anything just for fun since Christmas (and I haven’t yet had a chance to show you that project either!)

We took two much-needed days off at the end of last week, and I finally had a chance to make something just for me. I first saw this idea on Pinterest 40(!) weeks ago and it’s taken me until now to find the time to make it: a little beanbag stand for my BlackBerry so I can prop it up at my desk. It’s a really simple, neat design, and quick to sew.

My pin linked to a finished handmade item for sale on Etsy. Now, copying someone else’s design is one of those grey areas, and as I’ve talked about it before (from the point of view of the designer being copied) I thought I’d address that aspect quickly: this is a one-off stand for my personal use (not for profit), and a quick Etsy search for “iPhone stand” revealed that at least 4 other sellers are making stands made using the same design (so it’s a non-exclusive design).

The shape is very simple and it’s obvious from a glance how to make one: it’s just a pyramid beanbag with a little ledge at the front to support the phone, so I’m comfortable that it was fair for me to make this one for myself. Still, it’s not my design, and I didn’t refine the concept or invent any special techniques to make this, so please don’t ask me for a tutorial or any tips on how I made mine – I’m not going to profit from someone else’s idea!

In South Africa, many craft supplies are difficult (or impossible) to find, so I’m reusing and upcycling wherever I can – I’ll be showing you more of those projects as and when I finish them! I’m hoarding my supply of plastic stuffing pellets for future amigurumi designs, so I didn’t want to use them up on this project. Instead, I went to a thrift store and found this poor sad little toy dog. I could feel that the body was stuffed with plastic pellets, so R3 (less than 50c) later, I had a carefully unpicked seam and a big bowl of plastic pellets. Despite my justifications and my careful toy surgery, I still feel like a soft toy murderer, but I really don’t think anyone would have bought this dog for a child to play with as it’s so stained and dirty, so at least I’ve given it some kind of new use.

It took forever to stuff it pellet by pellet (I only left a small opening, but the larger pellets kept getting stuck in the funnel I’d planned to use for the stuffing…) and I probably should have used a heavier-weight fabric too, but I love the result. I used some of the leftover fabric from my One Yard Wonders designs and it’s so nice to finally get to see the adorable Japanese fabric in use on a project!

It’s a shame the print doesn’t really show when the phone is in the stand, but now the little hedgehogs and squirrels can make me smile every time I pick up the phone and see the print that was hidden beneath it.

I definitely need to make time for more non-work projects. This was so much fun – I’d almost forgotten how much I enjoy just making stuff. Now I feel refreshed and ready for another busy week 🙂

Just a few quick items this month, as, behind the scenes, I’m juggling over 20 designs in various stages of completion, and trying to get my blog redesign finished so I can finally use my new logo…

Wildlife-Along CAL

Choose from my menagerie of wild animal patterns to crochet and meet us in the PlanetJune Ravelry group for the Wildlife-Along crochet-along, running until the end of the month…

You’ll find all the patterns – and a few more that didn’t make it into the above collage – in the Wild Animals category of my shop. And if you’re thinking “CAL? Huh?” or “What’s Ravelry?”, see the PlanetJune Crochet-Along FAQ for everything you need to know 🙂

With close to 100 new members in my Ravelry group over the past week (welcome to all of you!), I hope this CAL will be even better than usual!

Review and Win contest

April’s ‘Review and Win’ winner is Erica A, with her Baby Bunnies review:

A very cute pattern that is enjoyable to make. The instructions are clear and detailed for both the crochet and the assembly. I love how the subtle shaping results in such a cute and realistic finished object. The three variations give added interest and value.

Congrats Erica – 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!

Commissions

With 2 designs completed, the new commissions process is still going well.

I’ve added a couple of new options to replace the animals I’ve already designed, but I’ve had requests for many more. I’ve put up a poll on my Facebook page to find out if you’d prefer to have more choices, or if too many in the list at once would get confusing – please vote (or comment here if you don’t use FB) if you have an opinion on that!

The challenge with the Pocket-Along CAL was to either crochet animals from my pocket-sized patterns, or to miniaturize any of my other patterns by using fine yarn and a tiny hook. What I wasn’t expecting was how many people would do both – take the pocket-sized patterns and shrink them even further! You’ll see a lot of photos here with the crocheter’s hand for scale – most of the entries are keyring-sized, and in fact, you’ll see several with keychains attached.

For the first time this month, I’ve asked participants to follow my new guidelines for CAL photo submissions. By having all the photos supplied at a standard 4:3 ratio, I was able to write some code that will automatically generate all the photos and participant credits below – you can’t imagine how much time this will save me over time, with one of these roundup posts to write every month! (I should mention that my code orders the entries randomly, so don’t look for any patterns here.)

Don’t forget to keep reading to the end of this post for details of the May CAL – starting tomorrow!

Now onto the roundup…