PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

Although it may not look like it from the new PlanetJune Accessories collection cover pictures, I had a really hard time getting those photos – it actually took 6 photoshoots to get enough decent photos to release the collection. That’s 6 sessions of dressing up nicely and doing my hair and makeup, and 6 sessions of getting strange looks as I posed, feeling like an idiot, in various locations near the river…

It’s spring here, not autumn, and if you look carefully you can see huge palms, giant cacti, and other unusual foliage in the background of my photos, which doesn’t exactly set the autumnal scene I had in mind… Plus my two winters in a row this year, together with months of being stuck in the house with my busted rib, has left me with an even paler than usual complexion (if that’s possible).

It’s a world away from the carefully controlled lighting and scenery I use for my amigurumi photos! For the whole time I was trying to get these pics, I was blessed with bright endless sunshine every day, which meant I was often either squinting in the sunlight, or hidden in deep shadow. When there were a few clouds, by the time I got dressed up and on location, the clouds had all mysteriously vanished. And the wind! The wind here is so strong that it has its own name (‘The Cape Doctor’, as it supposedly blows away all the pollution). My lacy scarves and shawls would not stay put, and my carefully-styled hair whipped across my face and into a mess within seconds.

I was about to throw out all the rejected photos (500+!), but I thought these few were a good demonstration of a tiny fraction of what I went through, so I made them into a little animation for you:

Hahaha! It’s a miracle I ever got any half-decent photos, with winds like this!

And by the way, for anyone who thinks you can’t block acrylic yarn, look at the drape of my shawl! Blocking works miracles on ALL yarn.

Don’t forget you only have until this Sunday to take advantage of the launch week discounts on the new PlanetJune Accessories collection (details in the previous post) – and thank you so much to everyone who’s already bought some (or all) of my new designs! I hope you’ll enjoy crocheting them as much as I enjoyed designing them, and a lot more than I enjoyed modelling for them 😉

It’s been a long time coming, but I’m so happy and proud (and a little scared) to announce that the second PlanetJune Accessories Collection is finally ready! Don’t forget to read to the end to take advantage of my launch week discount codes!

The detailed patterns include full written instructions, photos, illustrations, and large, clear charted stitch diagrams where needed, and, as always, are backed up by unlimited support by email, should you have any questions.

So now, please allow me to present the PlanetJune Accessories Fall 2011 Collection! (By the way, there are lots more pictures of each design, if you click through to the individual pattern pages.)

The Diamond Flowers Scarf/Wrap can be worn as a shoulder wrap to show off the stunning diamond flower pattern to the full, or as a lacy scarf. Take advantage of a beautiful sock yarn colourway to make yours look spectacular! I used a bamboo sock yarn for mine, so it’s beautifully silky and soft against my skin. This pattern includes two complete versions: the standard width (as pictured), and an increased width option that allows you to make a wrap of any width.

The elegant Climbing Eyelets Triangular Shawl is worked upwards in rows from the bottom tip, which means the size is infinitely customizable – from a cute and tiny child-sized version to a giant oversized shawl to snuggle into, you’ll just keep crocheting until it reaches the size you want, then add the simple border. The lace pattern has a 2-row repeat, so you’ll pick it up in no time and be able to enjoy crocheting without having to worry about a complicated pattern. I made mine long enough that it covers the gap between the bottom of my shirt and top of my pants when I’m sitting at the computer (like right now)!

The Banded Lace Wrap continues my ‘easy crocheted lace’ trend from last year’s popular Gossamer Lace Wrap. Wear it as an elegantly light and lacy shoulder wrap, or as a frothy lace scarf (the layers make it surprisingly toasty as a scarf!). It’s easy to crochet in any width you want, from a skinny scarf to a full-width rectangular shawl. Although each pair of bands uses an 8-row repeat, there are only three different stitch patterns to memorise, so you’ll be flying through it in no time.

I think the Reindeer Antlers speak for themselves! For an instant cute costume for the kids (or a costume party for adults), crochet these reindeer antlers and ears. All you need is a wide plastic headband and your crochet supplies. Make this lighthearted design and everyone will want to try on the antlers and be instantly transformed into a real-life amigurumi – how can you resist?

And finally, my Chunky Elegance Rug Trio is three crochet patterns in one! Not just resized doilies, this trio of rug patterns has been specifically designed for comfort: they are soft and cozy to sit or stand on, and there are no large holes that your foot could slip through to touch the cold floor. Each round is different, to keep your interest up as you crochet! The pattern includes coordinated designs in 20″, 30″ and 40″ (50cm, 75cm, 100cm) sizes.

There is one more pattern in the making that was intended to be part of this collection, but I didn’t want to delay the launch any longer. The ‘missing’ design will be my next donationware pattern, and it’ll be perfect to make a few as quick stocking-stuffer gifts, so remember to look out for it nearer to Christmas 🙂

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Launch Week Discounts! These discounts are valid on all my Accessories patterns, not just the new collection (excluding last year’s Scalloped Scarf pattern as it’s donationware, so you set your own price anyway).
These automatic discount codes are valid until this Sunday, October 9th.

Buy any PlanetJune Accessories pattern, save 5% with code PJAC05
Buy any 2 PlanetJune Accessories patterns, save 10% with code PJAC10
Buy any 3 PlanetJune Accessories patterns, save 15% with code PJAC15
Buy any 4 PlanetJune Accessories patterns, save 20% with code PJAC20
Buy any 5 or more PlanetJune Accessories patterns, save 25% with code PJAC25

You’ll find all the PlanetJune Accessories patterns in my shop.

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I really hope you like the new collection – I’ve worked so hard for the past couple of months to make it as good as possible. Please let me know what you think in the comments and, if you have requests for future accessories designs, ask away!

The best part of a Crochet-Along, for me, is getting to see all the photos and seeing what people have done with my patterns. And I have to say, with the Fruit-Along, the creativity and photo staging of all the participants has been really impressive! I think you’ll enjoy this roundup 😀

Before I get to that though, I wanted to let you know that the PlanetJune ravelry group is finally developing a life of its own, beyond posts from me. Members are choosing and running their own monthly CALs, suggesting new pattern ideas, asking amigurumi questions, showing off their FOs, and more! I’d love to see more of you joining in – I think it’s going to be a really fun and useful hangout now the activity level is increasing.

The first member-chosen CAL starts today: a Halloween CAL for October. Join in on Ravelry and have fun photographing your Halloweeny crochet!

And now see the results of September’s CAL, the Fruit-Along! (To make it faster to write this post, I’m just crediting the participants by their Ravelry usernames)

jukatca & theMarkofSMB

silverlotus & theMarkofSMB

Lightblue & CrochtColorJunkie

Fatals-attraction & petrOlly

klopferli & petrOlly

MissMaro & KOKOXIE

muscidae & theMarkofSMB

jukatca & CrochtColorJunkie

AliciaLee418 & jukatca

Aren’t they all wonderful?! If you’d like to have some fun photographing your projects too, come to the PlanetJune group on ravelry and join in the next CAL 😀

One year ago today, I launched my first PlanetJune Accessories collection. I designed my patterns to showcase what I consider to be the beauty and variety of crochet, and also as teaching tools, with full written instructions, technique explanations and tips, photos, illustrations, and charted stitch diagrams.

The customer feedback I’ve had has been so positive (check the reviews in my shop to see!) that I’ve been eager to find time to create another set of designs. Over the past couple of months, I’ve been working hard so that I’d be able to launch my second collection today, on the anniversary of the original launch. For the past couple of weeks I’ve been Accessories-obsessed, stressed to the eyeballs, with no time or energy to spend on anyone or anything else, just to try to get this collection ready to launch by the end of September.

Um, does that seem stupid to you too? Why am I torturing myself by working myself into the ground, just to meet an arbitrary deadline?!

You may not appreciate this (I didn’t, and I’ve been through it before, so I really should have remembered), but there’s a ridiculously large amount of work that goes into creating a collection of patterns when you do it all yourself. Designing, crocheting, pattern writing, testing, stitch diagram drawing, phototography, modelling, editing and layout – the list goes on, and every stage is time-consuming if you want to do it right and produce a high quality product. Then multiply it all by 5 or 6 and try to work on them all simultaneously without losing your mind….

This process has made me think seriously about the way I’m running my business. I have a lot of ideas, and a lot of things I want to create and accomplish. But there’s only one June, and only so many hours in the day. I set myself big goals and push myself far too hard to reach them – I don’t want to get sick again, or burn out.

So that’s why today’s post is to announce that I will not be releasing a new PJ Accessories collection today: I’m going to take a few more days and make sure I do justice to my new designs. I’m really excited about them, and I hope you’ll love them too!

Here’s a little taster of what you can expect:

Look out for the new PlanetJune Accessories collection, coming soon, with launch week discounts! If you want to make sure you don’t miss them, sign up for my newsletter – I’m going to hold back my September update so I’ll send out the newsletter, including the discount codes, as soon as the collection is ready.

And now, I think I’m going to stop working (for a few minutes, at least) 🙂

The one thing that really upset me about not selling eyes for amigurumi any more was not being able to offer my bestselling Amigurumi Accessory Kit – it was so popular with amigurumi makers, and made such a nice gift for a crocheter or as a starter kit for someone who’d like to try making amigurumi.

So, I’ve decided to try a test run of a new and improved Amigurumi Accessory Kit.

It’s back – with a huge selection of goodies for amigurumi-making!

As before, it includes the bestselling PlanetJune exclusive amigurumi tools (check out the reviews on their product pages – linked below – and you’ll see why they are absolute essentials), and a selection of commonly-used eyes.

The new kit includes a selection of larger clear eyes than the original kit. As clear eyes have a smaller black pupil, you usually need to use a slightly bigger eye than you would with an all-black eye to get a cute look. Now, instead of only three sizes, you’ll be able to experiment with eyes in every size between 6mm and 15mm, and get a better idea of which sizes to buy in future. (By the way, if you’re looking for more eyes, I won’t be selling them again except in this kit, so I recommend you visit Suncatcher Eyes when you need to stock up.)

My new Amigurumi Accessory Kit includes:

• 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

Whether you’re just getting started with amigurumi, or want a selection of the best accessories conveniently to hand, the Amigurumi Accessory Kit is a great deal at only $12 (the separate components would cost $15 if bought alone, plus you’d need to pay for two shipping charges – for the exclusive tools from my shop and for the eyes from somewhere else).

As I said at the start of this post, this is a test run to see how popular the new kit will be, and I currently have limited stocks, so please don’t wait too long if you’d like one (or more). Also, tell your crocheting friends! If the kit sells well, I’ll add it to my permanent product list.

You’ll find the new and improved Amigurumi Accessory Kit exclusively in the PlanetJune shop.

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

I’ve seen so much wildlife that it’s hard to keep this to one post per month – I still have photos from months ago that I haven’t had a chance to show you yet! I’ll try to come up with some kind of theme for each post, to help me select which photos to include. My theme this month is giants – and I have a very varied selection that fits into this category! I’ll show them by size…

I’ve been hearing something large that buzzes as loudly as a hummingbird flying around my garden, but I couldn’t figure out what it was until I finally saw one on the ground. This is one big beetle (about an inch long):

It’s a garden fruit chafer (pachnoda sinuata), from the same family as scarabs and dung beetles. Apparently, it’s a pest because it feeds on fruit and flowers. All I know is it gives me a fright when one zooms right past my head!

This is the caterpillar of the Cape Lappet Moth. Although they are about 4″ long, seeing one by itself like this isn’t too scary – it’s actually quite pretty, with a purple patch on its head and soft coppery hairs on each side. But you’ll commonly see dozens swarming together on a tree trunk, and that’s a far creepier sight…

The porcupine is the largest rodent in Africa, sometimes reaching over 2 feet long! We saw these Cape Porcupines at World of Birds – although they are common here, they’re also nocturnal, so there’s not much chance of me getting a photo of one in the wild. Just look at those quills!

Imagine going for a walk along the river by your house and seeing this giant coming in to land (there’s a pigeon there too, for scale – it has a 9ft wingspan)…

It is, of course, a Great White Pelican. At 160cm long, it’s as long as I am tall! We watched it waddling around on the river bank, preening, and then swimming around for ages with its big feet visible behind it in the water as it slowly paddled. Then a second one flew down to join it, looking more like a giant pterosaur than a bird in flight. It’s just amazing to see this kind of thing!

We visited Rondevlei Nature Reserve, only a short drive from our house and home to around 230 species of birds. We saw over 35 species on our visit, but this vlei (lake) is actually also home to a family of hippos! We spent a while looking for them, but hippos usually stay underwater during the day, and only emerge to graze in the evening.

We didn’t see any sign of a hippo except these tracks they have trampled (unfortunately, it’s not that obvious from my photo, but the grass in the middle, between the bushes, is the hippo trail). Maybe we’ll catch a glimpse of an actual hippo next time we visit…

At this time of year, Southern Right Whales come close to shore, to breed and give birth. We were just on our way back from Rondevlei, when we saw what was unmistakeably a whale tail, sticking up out of the water. Our first whale! I assumed it would be about the size of a beluga whale; it was only later when I got home that I discovered that this whale is 50ft (15m) long, and the tail alone is around 5m wide – no wonder it was so easy to spot (hence the poor photo quality; we were actually a very long way away). The whale kept its tail pointed up out of the water for ages – this is apparently a known behaviour called ‘sailing’.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my latest wildlife update. Life is certainly very different for me here, and not without its challenges and frustrations, but, as a nature lover, it’s wonderful for me to see all these animals and birds that I imagined I’d only ever see in zoos or on wildlife documentaries, and I’m not taking that for granted!

Wow, what a contest! I so enjoyed reading all your comments on my interview with Liz and Zontee from YarnCraft, and seeing which yarn colours are your favourites.

I had an overwhelming 170 comments to go through, so I did it the technical way so I wouldn’t be working on it all night:

• downloaded all the comments
• stripped out any duplicates
• stripped out any entries that arrived after the end of the contest
• used random.org to choose the winner from the remaining 164 entries

And the winner is:

#15, Chrisie Merriman! Congratulations, Chrisie! I’ll email your Fruit Bat pattern to you, and pass on your details to Zontee at Lion Brand, and she’ll hook you up with your Vanna’s Choice yarn (in your choices of Espresso, Toffee and Scarlet).

No losers at PlanetJune…
Now, I know this means I’ve left 163 people disappointed, and that makes me feel bad, so I’m going to send you all a little something to make you feel better. Check your email 😉

Have you entered my contest to win your choice of Vanna’s Choice yarns and a PlanetJune pattern? It’s open until Thursday – don’t forget to get your entry in!

I thought you might like to see my new photo studio and a glimpse behind the magic (ha!) that goes into my crochet pattern photos. Things have changed for the better since I last showed you my light tent setup and tutorial photography setup. My photo setup in Canada included 2 swing lamps and 2 goose-neck lamps (all with daylight bulbs) and my light tent:

Light tent in the good old days

It worked well, and I was happy with it. The only problem was when I made something too large to photograph in the light tent (e.g. Reepicheep, dinosaur group shots): then I had to fall back on the (thankfully) good natural light in my craft room and wait for a bright, overcast afternoon to give me the right conditions to shoot in daylight.

My new craft room has no natural light to speak of – our house is on one level, the windows are small, and there are trees right outside my window, so it’s dim inside on even the sunniest day. (I’m sure this will be a blessing in the heat of the South African summer!)

Pretty view, but dark interior

As I couldn’t bring my old lamps with me (wrong voltage), I had to sell them all before I left and buy everything again at this end. There’s no IKEA or equivalent here, and 4 lamps and 4 bulbs at South African prices was not an appealing prospect. I also couldn’t find those daylight-coloured bulbs anywhere…

All these factors made a perfect excuse to upgrade my setup and invest in some professional lighting. I found an excellent local photographic shop, Studio22, who helped me to find a pro lighting solution that was within my budget. I bought 2 light stands, 2 fluorescent lamp heads (each with 2 sockets), 4x38W daylight bulbs (expensive, but they should last for years), and 2 translucent white umbrellas.

The new setup

And oh, what a difference!

• I can light my static scenes with an even light without having to fiddle with 4 lamps to get them all into position.
• The bulbs are cool, so I can shoot for hours without raising the temperature in my room.
• Without the confines of my light tent, I can light anything that fits on my desk, at any time of day or night.
• I can set up to shoot a tutorial or video and light the scene much more easily and evenly (and without roasting under the hot lights!)

Of course, nothing is perfect: my craft room isn’t huge, and those umbrellas take up a lot of room! When I have it all assembled, I have to pick my way around them to reach the computer. And this desk is also my sewing table, so I have to get everything out of the way if I want to set up my sewing machine. It’s really not a big deal, though: to dismantle, I just furl the umbrellas and move the light stands (still set up and plugged in) and camera tripod to the corner of the room. When I next need a photo, it only takes a minute to set it all up again.

Setting the scene (that’s my camera in the foreground)

On the desk, I create my scene. In this case, I have:

• My handpainted ‘dappled forest’ backdrop, stuck to the wall with sticky tack. (I painted this backdrop for my AfricAmi set in 2008, and I’m so relieved it survived the move without the paint cracking.)
• A fabric ‘ground’
• Fake foliage courtesy of the dollar store (I really miss dollar stores for buying props!)
• And, of course, the star of the show – my Aardvark in this case 🙂

I complete the setup with my camera on a tripod in front of the desk. I use the remote control (toe-operated!) when I’m making tutorials or videos, sat behind the camera with my hands in view, and otherwise take photos the regular way.

Hopefully my pattern photos will now be so irresistible that the business will repay my equipment investment in no time!