PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

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

Today I’m going to show you a very special type of bird, and one with a crafty connection! Weaver birds are found throughout Africa, and what makes them special is that the males weave an intricate nest to impress the females. Each species of weaver has different colouring and also builds a differently-shaped nest – isn’t that cool? In my area, we can see two types of weaver (Cape and Southern Masked).

This is a male Cape Weaver (Ploceus capensis). He’s in breeding plumage, with a reddish cast around his face:

The male weaver picks grasses and begins to weave them together around a hanging tree branch, usually over water:

He continues until he completes a beautifully-woven nest, with the opening at the bottom for security:

If a female is impressed with his nest-building skills, she moves in and lines the nest with softer grasses and feathers:

After a couple of days, the grasses turn brown and, if the nest is still empty, the poor male has to start building another nest to try again. But don’t feel too sorry for him – he’ll build more nests either way, and can have several breeding females in his flock!

These Cape Weaver nests were high in a tree, and not over water, so I could get a shot from below. From this angle, you can see the beautiful shape of the nest, with a short off-centre entrance tunnel:

This is a male Southern Masked Weaver (Ploceus velatus):

Their nest shape is different – more pointed at the top and with just a hole at the bottom (no entrance tunnel):

Here’s a fallen nest so you can see the inside and the beautiful craftsmanship!

As the weavers usually like to nest over water, we see them by the river near our house, and near ponds and lakes when we’re out adventuring. But I didn’t realise that weavers eat seed, so, when I put up a seed feeder at Christmas (in the hope of seeing a canary or other type of wild finch), we got a lovely surprise – weavers in our own garden!

Male Cape weaver:

I thought this was a pair of Southern Masked Weavers, but, looking closely, I see the female is actually a Cape Weaver. (The females look quite similar, but the Cape has a longer, pointier beak and the Masked has a whiter tummy and red eyes):

And, best of all, fledged babies in our garden! I’m reasonably sure these are a pair of baby Southern Masked Weavers:

(By the way, I’ve just discovered that the tree with the wicked-looking thorns the babies are sitting on here is a Bougainvillea. I’ll have to remember to take a photo when it’s in full bloom – it’s stunning!)

Aren’t the weavers amazing? It was hard narrowing down my pics to just these few – weavers are so interesting, I seem to have taken a couple of hundred photos of them, but I think these selections have captured the essence of weaver-ness for you 🙂

I hope you’ve enjoyed this month’s photos – I know I’ve enjoyed sharing them with you! Please leave me a comment if you liked them.

As I’m a 99% self-published designer, I don’t often get profiled in crochet magazines etc, so my Ravelry group decided to interview me to find out a little more about who I am and what I do – my own PlanetJune Story, if you like! I’ll be posting the answers to some of their questions every now and again, and grouping them by theme if they fit together nicely. Here are the first three:

How did you learn to crochet? (from Sandy G, via the blog)
Who taught you to crochet? (from Monica, theMarkofSMB)
What was the first thing you ever crocheted? (from Linda, Fatals-attraction)

In 2003, my husband and I moved from the UK to Canada, and I had time on my hands while I looked for a job. I’d always liked making things and I’d dabbled in various crafts in the past: polymer clay, cross stitch, candlemaking, sewing, and others. At the time, there was a big craft shop in the middle of Toronto (Lewiscraft – the chain closed years ago, sadly) and I spent a lot of time in there, looking for things to try out that wouldn’t cost much money. I tried teaching myself to knit, but didn’t really enjoy it. Then I picked up a crochet hook and a ‘learn to crochet’ book, and fell in love.

Did you notice I avoided the obvious “I was hooked!” pun there? I hope you’re proud of me!

(I’ve just remembered, this wasn’t actually my very first experience with crochet: my aunt apparently taught me the basics when I was tiny, but I don’t remember that at all, although I do still have my old hook – I always wondered why I had a crochet hook in my childhood sewing box!)

I’ve never been much of a pattern follower – I like to make up my own things (a precursor of things to come…). I also don’t like to start with really basic projects. So I decided I’d learn as I go by making an afghan to use against the cold Canadian winter, using squares of single crochet, and that’s what I did.

Here’s the thing: I didn’t really know how to crochet at the time, and this was an ambitiously large project for a total beginner! I made that basic rookie mistake of thinking you should insert your hook into the back loop (instead of both) to begin each single crochet stitch. I’d never heard of gauge, or blocking. I slip stitched my pile of squares together, but sadly didn’t know about leaving a long tail to weave in securely when you finish off, so my poor yarn tails are only about an inch long. I’d also never heard of edging, which would have given my afghan a nicer finish…

My first afghan (made in 2003-2004, photo from 2006). One of these squares is the first thing I ever crocheted!

It’s not perfect, but that’s okay. I still use it all the time; I keep it draped over a folding chair in my office so I can sit comfortably when I’m making videos and tutorials. The BLO single crochet doesn’t look like a mistake, unless you know it’s not what I intended! And I love being able to see the first thing I ever crocheted and know how far I’ve come.

After that, I decided to learn all the crochet stitches by making a sampler afghan – and yes, I did need a pattern for that! I used the 63 Easy-to-Crochet Pattern Stitches booklet (highly recommended if you’d like to crochet a stunning heirloom afghan, or to practice a large variety of crochet techniques and stitches).

Puzzling through the instructions for the trickier squares was what made me finally realise my mistake with the back loops, and ending up with squares of vastly different sizes is how I learnt about the importance of gauge. It took almost 3 years, but I finished it (with a sneaky extra round of sc around the edges of the tinier squares to even the sizes up a bit!) and it looks pretty impressive, even if it’s not quite perfect:

My second afghan (started Feb 2004, finished Nov 2006, photo from 2006)

The moral of the story is that, clearly, nobody starts out as an expert! These two afghans show my crochet learning experience in every stitch, and I love them both for that. It was a self-taught struggle – especially with no Ravelry or YouTube videos to consult as you can now – but, by the time I’d finished the sampler afghan, I really understood crochet. I could have made a 2nd, perfect, sampler afghan, but it was time for me to try something different…

I think this post is long enough now – I’ll save the story of how I got into amigurumi, and the rest of the interview questions, for another day. 😉

I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing a bit about my crochet background. If you have any questions you’d like to add to the interview pool, please submit them on Ravelry or in the comments of this post – I’ll do another interview post in a little while!

When I launched my pattern commissions page on Friday, I wasn’t sure which of these scenarios to expect:

• I might get no interest at all – I didn’t think that would happen, but as a worst case scenario I’d have lost nothing more than the time taken to set up the database and code the page.
• I might get a few nibbles, and a pattern commission every couple of months – this was my predicted outcome.
• I may get 2 pattern commissions at once – I didn’t think this was likely, but, just in case, I built in a clause that, should 2 patterns get funded within a month, I’d only collect the pledges for the second pattern after completing the first.

Well, I underestimated – in a big way. (I told you I was bad at making calculated business decisions!)

Eek – it’s going too well!

It’s been less than 4 days and I have one design fully pledged and several others getting close. I haven’t even notified my mailing list yet, so there could be a huge rush of pledges at that point. At this rate, my business could turn into full-time commissioned designs, which, while very flattering, isn’t something I can actually do – I still have all my other hats to wear, and a commitment to continue to make crochet videos and tutorials. I cannot possibly commit to creating more than one commissioned design per month – I can’t work more quickly without the quality of my designs suffering, and that’s not something I’m prepared to sacrifice (and, I’m sure, not something you’d want to pay for).

Plus, the commissions are only for basic animal designs. Anything complicated, or unusual, or something I’d be taking a gamble on in trying to create a design for it, is not going to appear on that commissions list – I have to wait for inspiration to strike before I can design things like that, and I need to leave myself time to let that inspiration happen.

There’d be no dinosaurs or succulents if I only made commissioned designs!

So, here’s my solution: I’m moving the goalposts by raising the total commission amount from $60 to $90. Minimum pledges will still be $6. For the koala (which is already fully pledged at $60) there’ll be no change – I’ve already committed to designing that.

The updated system

If you’ve already pledged:

• Your pledge stands at the dollar amount you originally agreed to.
• The change shouldn’t make any practical difference to you – by the time my koala design is finished, I’m sure the pledges will be back up to the level they were when you pledged, or higher.
• As before, you won’t have to pay for your pledge until I’m ready to begin the design.
• If, however, you feel hard-done-by, just email me if you’d like to cancel your pledge. I’m not trying to con anyone – just to set up a system that will work in the long term.

I’m going with full transparency here and I hope you’ll understand my reasons for this – the whole point of the commissions system is to gauge which design ideas may be most popular, but without making a change to the system, all the options will soon look equally popular! It’s an entirely new system, and the challenge (and also the potential reward) of innovating is that you just can’t know in advance how successful an idea may prove to be.

I expect the pledging frequency will drop after the initial flurry, but I may need to tweak the system a little more in the coming weeks/months, and I may, at some point, have to shift the totals again. If I do have to, my rules will remain the same:

• Any design that is already fully pledged will remain so.
• Whichever design is fully pledged first will be created first.
• The dollar amount of your pledge(s) will remain unchanged.
• If you really need to cancel a pledge, you may do so by emailing me before the design is fully pledged.

The first two points mean there’s still value in pledging early if you’d like to see your favourite design(s) made more quickly, so please don’t see this as a sign to stop pledging!

I think this is the fairest way of doing things, but if you have any suggestions, please feel free to share them in the comments or by email – your opinion counts too!

I have a lot of design ideas – too many, in fact. We live in an amazing world, and there are just too many wonderful animals and plants for me to be able to recreate them all in crochet. To help me decide which to make next, and see which would be popular choices, I’ve launched a new pattern commission model, so now you can help me make my design choices!

The way it works is like a mini Kickstarter, but exclusively for PlanetJune designs. If you’d like me to design a new crochet pattern, instead of commissioning me outright to design it for you, now you’ll be able to make a pledge towards the design commission.

If you love the idea and want to get the pattern as soon as possible, you can pledge the entire commission amount; if you’re happy to wait a while for some other people to come in with you to make the total amount, you can pledge as little as $6 towards the commission, or anything in between.

There’s nothing to pay at the time you make a pledge; the pledges stay active until a design is fully funded, and, at that point, I’ll collect the pledged monies and start designing. Once the design is complete, I’ll email a copy of the pattern to each of the pledgers.

On the Commissions page, you’ll see a graph showing the design ideas currently available for commission, and their current pledge states. As soon as you make a pledge, the graph will update to reflect it:

These are just test pledges so you can see what the graph will look like when I have some real pledges – I’ve reset them all to $0 now.

You can also suggest new ideas to me; I’ll add each to the Commissions list if a) I’d be happy to make a design for it and b) I’m confident I’ll be able to design it in the designated timeframe. More complicated or unusual requests may take longer to get right, so, if I like them, I’ll either design them anyway, just because I want to, or they’ll be available for private commission, with deadlines and pricing dependent on the design itself.

If you click through to the Commissions page, you’ll also get a first glimpse of my new logo in action! Refresh the page and you’ll see the photo in the header changes, so (in future, once the rest of the site has been updated) you’ll see a different photo there each time you go to a new page on my site:

Ooh, new logo alert!

It’s a really exciting time for me at the moment: I finally have the time to make progress on projects that have been in the works since long before I left Canada – everything got indefinitely postponed when things got too hectic… It was exactly a year and a day ago that I first started planning this new Commissions model, so it’s extra-nice to have it finally coded up and ready to go!

Site navigation will improve once I have the new blog design finished, but for now, there’s a text link to the Commissions page at the top of the right sidebar. —>

*click* – that’s the sound of another piece of my grand plan slotting into place 🙂

I thought I was being pretty clever when I designed my blog header in 2007: 7 pictures, to give an idea of the variety of crafts I do (crochet, polymer clay, sewing, sketching) and tied together into a ‘patchwork’ using the same zig-zag ‘stitches’ I used to make my Japanese-inspired patchwork lunch bag.

When I designed the shop, I used the same header, but swapped the non-crocheted items for more crochet patterns you can find in the shop.

It was all very clear and self-explanatory, in theory, but it didn’t quite work out that way. Over the years, I’ve had several enquiries about each of the crochet patterns in my blog header that aren’t available in my shop, and I’ve had to explain over and over again that the donkeys are pencil sketches, the tiny flowers and avocados are polymer clay, and the poinsettia is sewn from fabric – they clearly aren’t as obviously non-crocheted as I had thought…

The obvious solution to replace the old design was to design a real logo for PlanetJune: a symbol to represent me and to use throughout my website. I started the process in 2009. I read books and articles on good logo design and I knew exactly what I wanted, but I had problems drawing it without adding too much detail.

I’m too stubborn/controlling to ask for outside help: PlanetJune is my baby and it just wouldn’t feel right for the symbol that represents me to be created by somebody else. Then life got in the way, and it wasn’t until I was forced by circumstance (I discovered that my old zig-zag template is no longer on my computer!) that I thought much about the logo again.

Long story short: I drew 2 pages of sketches, made 15 digital prototypes, and now, 3 years later, it’s finally ready. So here it is: the PlanetJune logo…

I hope it’s obvious what it represents!

As you can see below, I’ll be changing the text for the various parts of the site; I have a square version for avatars and anywhere I need a smaller logo; and I even have two teeny tiny ones for my favicon (the tiny square image you see next to a website’s name in your browser):

I was planning to wait until the whole site was ready to relaunch before announcing the logo, but I have some new web projects that I want to launch in the next couple of weeks, and I can’t use the old design now I’ve lost the zig-zag source file. Redesigning the blog and shop while putting my new projects together and running the rest of my business would be a huge job, and I don’t want to delay the exciting new projects until I can redesign everything.

So: a compromise. The new pieces will have the new design, and the homepage, blog, shop, mailing list, and everything else will get their redesign when I have time. (Although the whole site looks the same, each of those things is built with a different structure going on behind the scenes, so updating each one will be a large individual project.)

I do care about looking professional, but at the end of the day, I am a one-person business, and maybe the rules of professionalism that apply to a larger business should be a little more relaxed for an indie business. Until the day I can clone myself so I have a web designer/developer, a customer service rep, and a creative director, I still have to wear all those hats, and, as my business grows, it’s becoming more difficult to fit everything into my day and still have some sort of a life! I’ve realised it’s compromise or collapse at this point, and so I choose to compromise – the world won’t end if my logo takes a while to spread throughout my website!

I’m so excited to finally have a logo for PlanetJune! I hope you like it too. (And, just in case it wasn’t immediately obvious to you, it’s a yarn planet – what else would PlanetJune be made from?!)

I’m so glad my last post on building a unique and successful business by combining your passions and skills resonated with so many people – I hope I’ve inspired a few people to discover their own path to success. (And I also hope someone appropriates my crocheted baked goods with matching recipes idea – I still think that’s an excellent hook for a business!)

Easter CAL

2012 may be the Chinese Year of the Dragon, but around these parts, it’s definitely the Year of the BUNNIES! My Baby Bunnies crochet pattern seems to be irresistible – the bunnies are multiplying so fast, we have almost 20 entered in the Easter Crochet-Along already! We should have just called it a Bunny CAL – I think the other pattern options are feeling a little neglected…

You’ll find the bunny-making madness at the Easter CAL thread in the PlanetJune Ravelry group – if you’re making bunnies this month, please come and share your pics 🙂

Review and Win contest

February’s ‘Review and Win’ winner is Katalin G, with her Succulent Collections 1 and 2 review:

These plants look wonderfully realistic, yet they are easy and quick to make thanks to the smart design. It deserves to be a huge hit!

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

The next draw will mark 2 years of me running this contest – that’s 24 free patterns I’ve given away to reviewers! 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!

Craft Tutorials

I’m slowly adding my most popular craft tutorials as printable PDFs (donationware) in the shop. New arrivals this month include the ever-popular Shrink Plastic Rings, and my Offset Square Wrist Pincushion and matching Fabric and Felt Needlebook sewing patterns. The needlebook was previously only available in the book One Yard Wonders, so if you don’t have that book, now you have a chance to make it anyway – and it makes a very sweet pins-n-needles set with the pincushion.

PlanetJune in the Press

Two current UK magazines have PlanetJune mentions: Simply Knitting April 2012 (they apparently cover crochet too, despite the title!) and Inside Crochet issue 27:

Simply Knitting included my Easter Eggs pattern at #6 in their “12 Treats for Knitters at Easter” article:

and Inside Crochet readers voted me as 2nd best crochet blog:

Thanks to everyone who voted for me in the blog awards, and welcome to any new UK readers who’ve found me through these articles – I hope you find lots to interest you here!

Yesterday morning, I tweeted:

HUGE milestone reached: in February I earned more than when I had a day job! I’m awestruck..! #crochet #pro #dreamjob

…and all day, people were asking me how I did it. At first, I said “I have no idea!” but as the day progressed I kept thinking about it and I realised that’s not at all true: the last two months have been amazing, business-wise, and I can track that back to the fact that I decided not to let money be my priority any more. Putting that into practice, I’ve started to make changes. For example:

• Sellers’ List: I don’t want to, or have the time to, sell finished toys. So, I set up the sellers’ list so I can field those enquiries to my customers who do want to sell finished toys made from my patterns. (I make nothing from this service.)
  Unexpected result: More pattern sales to happy customers who are selling the toys they crochet.
• Videos: I want to continue to help other people improve their crocheting skills, so I’m aiming to create one new crochet tutorial video per month. Each one is a big time commitment, but it’s important to me, and people are responding well to my videos and asking for more, so I know it’s worth it.
  Unexpected result: As my videos become more popular, I’m actually starting to make a significant amount of money from the ads on my YouTube channel.
• Succulents: I didn’t think my Succulent Collections would be big sellers; I just really wanted to make them for myself! I thought that, if I was lucky, maybe half the people who enjoyed the Cactus Collections might pick up the succulent designs too…
  Unexpected result: Not only have the succulents been wildly popular, but they are generating more sales of the cactus patterns too.
• Baby Bunnies: I also didn’t expect my Baby Bunnies to be especially popular – I mean, there must be hundreds of bunny patterns out there already… I just wanted to use my angora yarn and make something cute that would make me happy.
  Unexpected result: Turns out that my Baby Bunnies make a lot of people happy!

So what does this show? Well, embarrassingly, it shows that I’m clearly terrible at making calculated decisions when it comes to my business – after all these years in business, I still can’t predict what will be popular and where my time would be best spent! If I was just going for profit, I probably wouldn’t have designed either of these hugely popular patterns; I wouldn’t make a free list just to help my customers make money; and I certainly wouldn’t be ‘wasting’ my time making videos for free.

But all these things have actually helped to bring in more customers, more money, and more publicity for my site – all without me doing any advertising or marketing.

How can this help you?

I’m not telling you to stop thinking about making money! What my decision has really done is allowed me to be more me – to concentrate on what I do well and what I love, instead of what I think may make the most money. And people are responding to that – I have (inadvertently) created the PlanetJune ‘brand’.

You can do this too! There are countless designers/artisans/crafty business owners out there, but there’s only one you. What makes you special? It’s your unique qualities – your passions and skills – that set you apart from everyone else, and if you can build those into your business, you can create something that’s all you.

Passions

Take some time and figure out what you’re really passionate about, in your craft/business and in life. (If you can bring the two together, even better!) It’s about finding your own style and developing a brand for yourself, based on the real you. If you love what you do, it shows.

• It’s pretty clear, when you read my blog, who I am and what I love: animals and nature; discovering crochet techniques and passing them on; finding a balance between a realistic design and an easy-to-follow pattern.

If you design crochet patterns, but when you’re not promoting your designs, all you talk about are your food photography and baking projects, it’s easy to see that your passions, at least partly, lie elsewhere. How can you bring those into your business? How about creating a line of crocheted baked goods that each include your recipe for the edible version? It’d be a unique and popular selling point, and help build your brand.

Skills

What can you do well, and how can you apply that to your business? Even the most mundane jobs and past experiences build your skills, even if the jobs themselves are totally unrelated to your business.

• For me, I’ve learnt a lot of things that have no use to PlanetJune, but: 2 science degrees taught me the importance of accuracy; years of technical and research support taught me how to help people; and my technical writing experience taught me how to explain things clearly.

Maybe you have skills in photography, face to face communication, drawing, project management, storytelling… How can you make those skills work for you, to make your business better and more uniquely you? How can you provide a service that your competitors can’t?

Be Yourself

What sets us apart, as indie businesses, is the way we can interact with our customers. They get to know us and trust us through our blogs, through social media, and through the way we respond to their emails. They aren’t just buying a pattern from a faceless company, they are buying from you, a real, genuine person.

Let the world see a little more of the real you, and use your skills, passions, and personality to shape your business into something that only you could do. You can create a brand that will get people talking, make you stand out from the crowd, and sell your work for you!

As there were 2 simultaneous Crochet-Alongs running for the first half of this month, and the Valentine’s CAL was so popular, I wasn’t sure we’d get many entries in the Plant-Along. I’m happy to have been proved wrong! Here’s the spectacular roundup for February’s Plant-Along CAL – and keep reading to the end to find the March theme…

(For speed, I just give credit with participants’ Ravelry usernames.)

Get ready for a floral explosion – you’re about to enter a virtual nursery or garden centre! Here we go…

Single cacti and succulents:

Fatals-attraction & CrochetChrisie

Veggie & CrochtColorJunkie (yet to be ‘planted’ in a pot!)

CrochetChrisie & Fatals-attraction

Other singles:

rastakt (water lily) and klopferli (plumeria)

Plumeria and roses by ChefTerror

Daffodil and rose hair clip by CranberryAmi

African Violets:

Fatals-attraction & PixyKayte

Fatals-attraction & saudistitcher

both by CrochetChrisie (those are 2 separate, but matching, plants)

Lucky Bamboo

CrochetChrisie & rchlsrsly (still to be potted)

Cactus and Succulent groups

Fatals-attraction & CrochetChrisie

esmerelda62 & CrochetChrisie

rawrjaimee & Soprefon

Some clever modifications:

Teeny tiny miniature succulents by Luna1130

Water Lily coaster set by petrOlly (such a clever idea!) – with a Poison Dart Frog made in green to make him into a regular frog!

And some mega-groups to finish with!

jukatca fitted all 8 succulents into a giant pot (ingeniously made from the large Gift Box pattern)

Luna1130 made both pot sizes for her succulent collections…

… and did the same for her cacti too!

And theMarkofSMB made almost everything on offer – wow!

Looking at all these beautiful plants just makes me smile – I hope it’s done the same for you! (If you’d like to make any of the patterns featured in this CAL, you’ll find them all under Flowers & Plants in my shop.)

Are you tempted to join in the March CAL? The theme is spring/Easter, and we have a lovely selection of patterns for you to choose from (including the new Baby Bunnies – which is still on special for the rest of today if you haven’t picked up a copy yet):

Because of the Easter theme, this CAL will run March 1st – April 8th (Easter Sunday). If you’d like to join in, you can find all the patterns in the Holiday & Seasonal section of my shop, and you’ll find the Easter CAL thread in the PlanetJune Ravelry group – I hope you’ll join us there! 🙂