PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

Update: The Scarf Sweater instructions, together with my Eyelet Ripple stitch pattern, are now available as a printable Donationware pattern. They are still available for free, but if you like them please consider sending me a donation to show your appreciation:

Send me a donation and receive the easy-to-print PDF version of the instructions and stitch pattern (with bonus assembly photos and instructions on how to wear it) as a thank you!

Donations of any size are much appreciated. Just add the amount you wish to donate, and, once you have checked out and paid, your pattern will instantly be available to download from your PlanetJune account.

The complete pattern and instructions are available below, regardless of whether or not you choose to pay for them 🙂

This is a PlanetJune original crochet pattern. Feel free to use items made from this pattern however you wish, but I’d appreciate credit as the pattern designer. Please do not reproduce the pattern anywhere else; instead post a link to www.planetjune.com/scarfsweater

Not ready to make it yet? Add it to your Ravelry queue:

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I saw an intriguing knitwear idea on Pinterest a few weeks ago, and had one of those ‘I could make that’ moments. Here are some examples I found on Etsy (the first picture is the one I first found – uncredited – on Pinterest, and used my Google Search by Image trick to track down):

Photo (and inspiration) credit L-R: Max & Melody, Pilland, Rumina

I just wanted to test the basic concept to see how it worked – it’s essentially just a scarf turned into a sweater by wrapping and stitching it together. It’s very simple, so while I won’t be creating a full pattern, I’ll share the basic method (below), in case you’d like to make one too! I crocheted mine, but you could easily knit one if you prefer.

My version is very simple – I just crocheted a long rectangle like a scarf, wrapped it around myself, seamed the two short edges, and seamed across the back. I used worsted weight yarn for speed and crocheted a basic eyelet ripple to add a subtle chevron pattern. I also made it a bit wider than knitted ones, as an experiment to see if that would make it more snuggly.

Update: I’ve published free instructions for my eyelet ripple stitch pattern, in case you’d like to use it to make your own Scarf Sweater, or to make a scarf or ripple blanket 🙂

I think it’s pretty cute, although a little chunky on my short figure. The nature of the design makes it a bit of a challenge to get into, and the shoulders are a bit constrictive – I won’t be raising my arms above my head while wearing this! But the best thing about it is that wearing it feels like a warm, soft hug; despite having no sleeves, it’s really warm and cosy.

If I planned to take this further, I’d refine the concept to make a more elegant, less bulky version. But I think this is the end of the line for my experiment – it was fun, it worked, my curiosity is satisfied, and I have a new handmade garment to keep me warm.

If you want to try making one of your own, here’s a mini tutorial to get you started. You can knit or crochet this, in any stitch pattern you like – all you’re doing is making a long narrow rectangle, just like a scarf:

Basic Scarf Sweater Instructions

1. Measure your back from where you want the bottom of the sweater to sit, up to your neckline (add an inch or two if you want to make a little fold-over collar like mine has or keep it shorter to be more fitted). Divide by two to get your width measurement.
2. Pick a stitch pattern and start crocheting (or knitting) a rectangle with the width you determined in Step 1.
3. You’ll be making a very long rectangular scarf, but the length depends very much on your figure! The easiest way to figure out how long you need it is to wrap it around yourself: it should go across the back of your shoulders, cross over down your front, around your back above the waist, and cross over again up your front to meet the starting edge. It’d be easiest to get someone else to arrange it on you and make sure the two wraps meet across the middle of your back, or you can do it yourself in front of a mirror and expect to wriggle a lot to get it into position (guess which I did!)
4. When it’s long enough, pin the two short ends together while it’s on your body, then seam together (or make a double twist and then seam the two short ends together).
5. Arrange it nicely with the seam in an inconspicuous place – mine lies on the lower wrap so it’s hidden. Ask your helper to pin the top and bottom wraps together across your back (or figure out where to stitch by yourself – it’s possible; I managed!), then seam them across the back, stopping just before each underarm.

Update: It just occurred to me that although you can use any yarn (and a suitably sized hook), it may be helpful for you to know the details of what I used for mine, as a starting point for yours: I used an H (5mm) hook and worsted weight yarn (Bernat Satin, in Denim Mist Heather). I used 2.7 skeins and I wear a size XS-S top.

This is probably the simplest ‘pattern’ there could be for making a sort of sweater, don’t you think?

I hope you enjoy this pattern. Please leave me a comment below if you do, and consider leaving me a donation. Thanks!

There’s been much talk lately about how to share on Pinterest properly: giving credit to the source of your image, and making sure the pin actually links back to the source correctly before you re-pin it. I have an excellent example of why this is so important. Yesterday, I suddenly got a massive traffic spike on my blog and lots of new comments on my shrinkydinks ring tutorial.

When I investigated the source, they were all coming from Pinterest and Tumblr – nothing weird about that. But then I clicked through to see the source, and here’s what I found:

Lovely! Except… not only is this not one of my shrinky rings, but a quick glance made me seriously doubt that it was a shrinky ring at all – there’s no way to make a seamless join with a shrink plastic ring, and this looked smooth and perfect. So why is it being linked to my tutorial?

I clicked through from Pinterest to see the source, and found this:

A tumblr site, with no attribution for the image at all. This is very common with tumblr – people ‘blog’ photos they’ve found online and there’s no link back to where they found the photo, or any information about it. This is why I avoid tumblr: it’s too frustrating to not be given any information about what you’re looking at.

But all is not lost! Thanks to Google’s new Search by Image function, you can enter the URL of a photo and it’ll show you where else that picture appears online. (It’s very useful if you want to see if anyone has been stealing your photos, as well as letting you track down the source for a creditless photo.)

To use the Search by Image feature, go to Google Images and click the little camera icon at the right of the search box:

Go back to your source picture* and grab its URL (right click on the picture; the exact wording of the option varies between browsers but in Chrome it says ‘Copy image URL’), then paste it into the search box:

* Edited to add: you can do this directly from its Pinterest page: don’t click the pin to go to the (supposed) source, just right click the image in Pinterest to get its URL.

After you click ‘Search’, you’ll see links from all over the internet, wherever a webpage uses the same photo. In this case, there are lots of results, and almost all of them are social bookmarking sites:

I ignored all those and looked through until I found one that sounded like it may be the original:

Bingo! And clicking through to Keri’s Autumn Bangle page informs me that this image is, in fact, nothing to do with either shrinky dinks or rings: it’s a bangle, “Designed as a one complete vector image then screened onto thin acetate. Next step, encase in resin for eternity. Sand, buff, wear. This bangle is for sale. If you’d like one, just ask!”

Now, just think how much business Keri may have received as a result of all this exposure, if only the first person to share her photo on Tumblr had credited this page, or her Etsy shop, as the source.

But instead, the anonymous image propagated, and, at some point, someone added the ‘information’ that it was a shrinkydinks ring, and someone else added the link to my tutorial… And, while I’m very happy to see my tutorial reach more eyes, I can’t and won’t take the credit for Keri’s lovely resin bangles! (If you’d like to order a bangle from Keri, her Etsy shop is Par Amour Design her web store is Omnia Oddities.)

A side note: in case you’re thinking of giving up on Pinterest as a source of inspiration, here’s an encouraging sign. Plenty of people are doing it right: a search for “shrinky ring” brings this:

Yep, 14 of those first 15 results are links to my tutorial – and there are many, many more if you scroll down.

So, three points to take away from this:

• Don’t believe everything you read online without question.
• Think before you share a link (whether on your blog, pinterest, twitter, facebook, or anywhere else) and make sure you’re actually linking to the most useful page for your readers!
• If a link doesn’t lead where you expect, a little sleuthing with Google can often turn up what you’re looking for.

Happy browsing… 🙂

A quick newsy post today, with a new winner, a new name, and a new deal:

Review and Win contest

October’s ‘Review and Win’ winner is Holly M, with her Detail Stuffing Tool review:

I make a lot of stuffed toys (some crochet, some sewn) and this is the only stuffing tool I’ve ever tried that helps me get stuffing into those really small tubes/arms/legs/etc. A chore that used to take literally hours sometimes, now takes minutes with this little tool! I really can’t say enough about it – love love love it! Makes stuffing small limbs a breeze!

Congrats Holly! 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!

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Renamed: Amigurumi Essentials Kit

I realised months ago that having a line of patterns called PlanetJune Accessories and a kit called Amigurumi Accessory Kit was potentially confusing, but it took a suggestion from the ever-helpful ladies (and gents?) in my Ravelry group to make me do something about it. We didn’t have much luck coming up for a replacement name for the PlanetJune Accessories line (as I didn’t want the name to limit the scope of future designs – I think accessories is a good catch-all for everything except graded garments and toys), so we voted on a new name for the Accessory Kit instead.

So, as from today, the item formerly know as Amigurumi Accessory Kit is reborn as the Amigurumi Essentials Kit!

The contents is unchanged; you’ll still get:

• 1 Detail Stuffing Tool
• 5 Stitch Markers
• 2 pairs black 6mm safety eyes with washers
• 2 pairs clear 8mm safety eyes with washers
• 2 pairs black 9mm safety eyes with washers
• 2 pairs clear 10mm safety eyes with washers
• 2 pairs black 12mm safety eyes with washers
• 2 pairs clear 15mm safety eyes with washers

If you do want to order one (or more) as Christmas gifts, please be aware that mail from South Africa takes about 2 weeks at the best of times, and I imagine it’ll get slower as we approach the holidays, so please don’t wait too long if you want to make sure you’ll receive your package in time for the big day.

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PlanetJune Accessories Custom Set of 3 Patterns

I launched this a few weeks ago, but just realised that I forgot to announce it! Thanks to another suggestion from my amazing Ravelry group, I’ve launched a PlanetJune Accessories Custom Set multipack (following the successful model of my AmiDogs Custom Set): any 3 patterns of your choice from the PlanetJune Accessories line for a special price.

If you’re considering joining the November Accessories CAL, maybe this is the incentive you need to get started..?

The Halloween CAL was the first crochet-along organised entirely by PlanetJune ravelry group members, and wow, what a success: page after page of projects, creative photography, fun modifications to the patterns… I can see why people enjoy CALs so much.

Don’t be shy – please join the group and participate in future CALs! November’s CAL topic will be Accessories – that’s everything in the PlanetJune Accessories range, and you can also use any of my other patterns to create accessories (e.g. a flower pin or bag embellishment, a fruit necklace). Look for the new CAL thread from tomorrow…

And now see the results of the Halloween CAL! (As usual, I’m crediting the participants by their Ravelry usernames, so you can look them up on Ravelry if you want more details.) You’re going to love these pics!

I’ve been planning this ambitious design for a couple of months, and it’s finally ready: a family of Emperor Penguins!

Emperors are the largest of the penguin breeds, and probably what most people think of when they hear the word penguin. They’ve seen some extra popularity in recent years as they feature in the cute animated movie Happy Feet and the stunning documentary movie March of the Penguins.

I’ve been wanting to make a proper, amigurumi-style penguin for years, but until recently, colour-changing tehcniques weren’t up to what I had in mind. If you look at other penguin designs, they either have a white back, or a white oval (crocheted or felt) stitched onto their tummy, and neither of those options appealed to me. I’ve pioneered a new technique for creating smooth colour changes between a tummy and back (debuted with my Kingfisher pattern) and the beauty of this technique is that all the magic is in the actual pattern – you don’t need to learn any new stitches or methods to be able to follow it! I love innovating 🙂

So now I have a clever emperor penguin design, but I couldn’t resist making a little fluffy baby penguin too. I love how they look so different to the adults, but equally distinctive. And, of course, brushed crochet is the perfect technique to bring this little one to life.

If you’d like to make your own sweet pengys, you can buy the Emperor Penguin and Baby Emperor Penguin crochet patterns from my shop, and I’ve also put them together as an Emperor Penguin Family multipack for a special price.

I hope you like my penguins!

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

In our mission to look for more whales (you may remember we spotted a whale’s tail last month!), we decided to take a day trip to Hermanus, a small coastal town 120km east of Cape Town, and supposedly the best place for land-based whale-watching in the world.

En route, we stopped at Stony Point, which is home to one of the only three land-based penguin colonies in South Africa. It’s a natural colony of wild penguins, but it has been fenced in to protect the penguins from leopard attacks, and there’s a boardwalk so that the clumsy humans don’t stomp on the penguin nests.

(I’ll put a jump in here – this is a long post so feel free to skip the rest if you’ve just come for the crafts and don’t like nature!)

Let’s get this out of the way first: I was given a copy of this book to review. But I’m not being compensated for this review in any other way, and the following is based on my honest opinions!

Overview

Crafting With Cat Hair: Cute Handicrafts to Make with Your Cat by Kaori Tsutaya was originally published in Japanese, and has now been translated into English by Amy Hirschman. When they say “…to make with your cat” they really mean it, as all the projects in this book are designed to be created from the excess fur that’s removed when you brush your cat.

Cover, showing cat hair finger puppet

The included projects are:

• Finger puppets
• Book covers
• Cat portraits
• Tote bags
• Coin purses
• Knickknack boxes
• Pincushions
• Badges
• Mittens & gloves
• Hats & scarves

Note: the amazon description also mentions cat toys and photo frames, but this is incorrect.

My favourite project: pretty pincushions

Aside from the finger puppets, which are made by wet-felting, each project includes patterns to needle-felt the cat shapes onto the finished item, and some also include embellishments (eyes, collars, bells, etc).

Between each project, there’s an information spread. These cover the benefits of brushing your cat, a comparison of cat hair and sheep’s wool, seasonal shedding variations, and more. The info sections are brief and easy to read, and include lots of cat photos to enjoy.

Cat-embellished mini tote bags

Note: the publisher’s blurb says “All the projects are cat-friendly, eco-friendly, and require no special equipment or training”. But, for any of these projects apart from the finger puppets, you will need what I consider to be specialized equipment: a felting needle and some kind of foam or sponge to stab it into.

My Experience

Before I start, I should introduce you to the real star of this review, my handsome boy Maui:

Maui enjoying the South African sunshine – it’s a hard life…

I’d been collecting Maui’s fur for a couple of years, in case I thought of something to do with it, but then I moved abroad and decided to throw it all away before moving. Of course, now there’s something I could have done with it! Luckily Maui is a fur generator, and graciously consented to being brushed every day for a week so I could save his fur to test-drive this book for you. He’s a short-haired cat, so if his fur will work for these projects, I’m pretty sure that it’ll work for any cat hair.

From looking through the book, I got the impression that creating a clear outline for your needle-felted silhouette seems to be the hardest part, so I picked one of the largest patterns to give me the best chance of making it look good (the cat pattern that goes with the Coin Purse, p51). It’s nice that several cat shapes are provided for most of the projects, so you can choose a pose that looks like your own cat – the one I chose was very Maui-ish. I used a sheet of acrylic felt as my base, as I’m sensitive to wool. I gathered up my small pile of Maui’s fur, and I got to work.

I do have a little experience with needlefelting (I made a mini guinea pig), so I can tell you that needle-felting with cat hair is definitely much slower than with wool. The claim of “quick and quirky” projects is a little overly optimistic, in my opinion. Cat hair doesn’t really want to be felted; it takes more stabbing to get the strands to mesh together. But it does work, eventually!

I felt that the needlefelting instructions were a little brief – if I didn’t already know better I’d have assumed from reading the instructions that I’d stab the needle in a few times to anchor the fur, and that would be it. (If you don’t already know, you have to stab over and over again, all over the surface, to mesh all the strands together into a solid fabric.) There’s also no safety warning in the book, which I think is an oversight – this is a sharp serrated needle you’re stabbing very close to your fingers, and you do need to be vigilant. (Ask me how I know this…)

Pretty kitty silhouette (with the dreaded stabbing device)

It took me about an hour of stabbing to make my small cat silhouette (just over 2″ long), and it’s not perfect – it’s very tricky to make the edges neat, and perfectionism has no place here. You can see stray hairs around the edges and they really don’t like to be tamed; I may have been able to improve it further, but I took my stabbed finger as a sign to stop. Even so, it is adorable: it’s a sweet little silhouette of my Maui, made from his own fur! This is very special and I will treasure it.

The back looks similar, but more fluffy and less defined

The back (above) looks almost as good as the front! I’m not convinced that the cat hairs have matted together at all; it seems more like stabbing them through to the back of the felt has pinned the hairs into place. (FYI, the cheap acrylic craft felt stood up to all the stabbing with no problems, so don’t be afraid to use it as a base to needlefelt onto.)

I haven’t decided how to finish my piece: I may add a felt border and some simple embroidery, inspired by the Badges project (p66), or make or find a frame for it, à la Portraits (p36), or maybe a combination of the two. I also considered adding eyes and a tiny embroidered nose, but I think I’ll leave it as is; simple is sometimes better. If I change my mind, I’ll flip through the book again to give me ideas!

Peeves

Although there are 10 projects in this book, 1 involves wet-felting and the other 9 are all needle-felting projects. Yes, there are directions for making a pincushion, bag, coin purse, felt pin, etc, but the actual cat hair part of each of these projects is exactly the same: needle-felt a cat silhouette to the project you’ve made, or to a bought garment. This may be an inbuilt limitation of trying to craft with cat hair, as opposed to any lack of imagination on the part of the author: cat hair is too short to spin into yarn (unless you have a long-haired cat) and, as the book explains, it doesn’t felt as firmly as wool, so it may be that these limited projects are really all you can do with it. (I previously tried to make a felt ball with some of Maui’s fur, and, although it looked like it had felted firmly while it was wet, once it had dried some hairs popped out around the edges, and it really wasn’t pretty enough to do anything with.) Still, I had been hoping for a little more variety with what to do with the cat hair.

If you’ve never needle-felted before, I’d suggest you look up instructions online before you begin, and please, please be careful with the sharp needle!

After seeing how fluffy the finished piece is compared with felted wool, I’m also not entirely convinced how well the cat hair felt would hold up on any kind of garment or item that gets heavy use – I suspect you may end up shedding cat hair wherever you go..! But the ideas and the silhouettes are all very cute, so here’s my suggestion to get more mileage from the book: you could always use the provided cat silhouettes and instructions to needle-felt wool roving to your hat and mittens instead of the cat hair, to get a sturdier result, and maybe save the cat hair for the more ornamental projects.

Final Thoughts

I see one huge reason to buy this book: cat owners will go crazy for a little felted something made with their own sweet kitty’s fur! I love the little silhouette I made with Maui’s fur, and I’m sure that your non-crafty cat-mad friends and relatives would be equally delighted with a little replica ornament of their beloved feline companions – it would make a great Christmas gift (although maybe not a surprise, as you’ll need to gather a few days’ worth of cat fur brushings in advance)!

Crafting With Cat Hair is definitely a specialised book, and one that only cat-lovers will appreciate. But it’s fun to read for the cat info and photos, and the projects, while a little limited in scope, are very cute. If you like needlefelting, or want to try it for the first time, and you, or someone you know, loves cats, you’ll probably enjoy this book 🙂

The Halloween CAL in my Ravelry group is in full swing – I’ve never seen such a variety of pumpkins, and we’re only halfway through the month! This is going to make for a really fun roundup post 😀

I decided to join in with the CAL this time, because I’ve been meaning to try something unusual for a long time, and this is the perfect opportunity…. Meet my darling blue pumpkin (we’ll come back to the unusual colouring a bit later):

As a designer, you don’t often get to experience your own designs in the same way as anyone else does: you remember most of the pattern and how the construction works, and don’t have to follow many of the instructions to make another one. I made my Pumpkin pattern in 2008 and haven’t made one in 3 years, so it was like a completely new pattern to me; I’d completely forgotten it. To my surprise, I discovered it’s actually a really good pattern, simple but very clever – no wonder it’s so popular 😉

Anyway, back to my pumpkin: I didn’t think a spooky face would really fit his baby blue colouring, so I tried for a cute pumpkin face (I think it ended up looking a bit like a Pokemon, but I like it!)

Now, why would I make such a silly-coloured pumpkin? Because this is no ordinary yarn: it’s glow in the dark yarn!

(Bernat Glow In The Dark was unfortunately discontinued a couple of years ago, and I can’t imagine why they don’t re-release it every Halloween; it’s perfect for Halloween decorations and trick or treating costumes! I was lucky enough to recognise it in the unlabelled bin at the factory outlet sale before I left Canada, and grabbed all I could find. Sadly, there was nothing in yellow, orange or green, hence the baby blue and white pumpkin.)

But this makes it totally worth the unusual daytime colouring:

GLOWY! How cool is that?!

An aside: it’s actually very difficult to get a photo of anything glowing in the dark! I managed it in the end by setting up the camera on the tripod, focussing manually on the pumpkin, then draping blackout fabric over both the pumpkin (inside my old light box frame) and the camera before I took the shot. Before I quite perfected this technique, I ended up with this ‘ghost pumpkin’ photo:

…which I think is pretty cool too!

If you’d like to join in with the Halloween CAL, it’s going strong on Ravelry and we’d all be happy to see you there! 2.5 weeks of seasonal fun to go…