Look what’s arrived!

That’s right, I can’t quite believe this, but I now have over 100,000 YouTube subscribers! And YouTube have sent me a shiny silver Creator’s Award to commemorate the achievement – how cool is that?

I actually hit 100k in December (I have over 101k now!) and I wanted to do something to celebrate right away, so I decided to be brave and show my face on video for the first time ever, as well as giving you a glimpse into my design process as I celebrated by crocheting a silver play button.

If you haven’t seen it yet, here’s my video:

Note: The video may look a little small embedded in the blog: if so, you can fullscreen it or click through to YouTube to watch it full-sized 🙂

(And if you haven’t subscribed to the PlanetJune YouTube channel yet, now would be a great time! I’m gearing up to publish more crochet tutorial videos this year…)

Here’s my crocheted play button:

When my real award arrived, I was surprised by how close my crocheted version turned out to be! The shape of the button is pretty close, and the size of the button and the ‘play’ triangle are almost perfect…

Let’s pretend I intentionally designed it to be exactly the right size, okay?

I can’t describe how strange and cool it feels to be a part of a top tier of YouTube, especially because I don’t play the game the way you’re ‘supposed’ to – I don’t publish content regularly, I don’t fish for subscribers, I don’t have clickbait-y titles…

My strategy has always just been to make clear, concise and helpful crochet tutorial videos, and it’s so validating to have this recognition that PlanetJune is a valuable YouTube resource, even if I’m not a typical YouTuber!

(I don’t suggest you try to follow in my footsteps if you want to grow your own YouTube channel – it’s taken me over 10 years to reach this point using my lack-of-strategy, so there’s a distinct lack of instant gratification with my method! But this is the way it works for me; I don’t plan to go anywhere, and I’ve always been playing the long game of quality and commitment.)

By the way, it turned out to be quite tricky taking a photo of my award – especially as a selfie – because the play button itself is mirrored!

See? The truth behind my selfie magic is revealed… 😀

Woohoo! 100 thousand subscribers… isn’t that mind-blowing?! I’ll definitely have more videos coming soon – I can’t let a tenth of a million people down, can I?

There’s something about giant amigurumi that’s just so appealing. I love how quickly you can make a huge soft toy or decoration! So on December 1st I tweeted:

I may have just decided to crochet a giant purple mushroom and a giant blue gecko… These seem like entirely reasonable and useful items that need to exist in the world, right?

The reason for those colours? I had lots of random blanket yarn that I bought last year from the yarn factory outlet store without considering that the colours I like for clothing etc (purples, blues, etc) don’t really translate into useful colours for a lot of amigurumi (lots of browns and neutrals)…

Blanket yarn is so bulky, it takes up a lot of storage space, so keeping a stash of giant yarn isn’t the best idea. This plan would use up a good chunk of my blanket yarn stash, and all I’d need to buy is one ball of white for the mushroom stalk!

And here are the results:

Giant Mushroom

My Giant Mushroom uses mushroom design ‘C’ from my Mushroom Collection crochet pattern, and less than one ball each of the cap and stalk yarn colours.

I love how the giant gills turned out. The head was initially flopping about far too much for my liking, so I unstitched the cap from the base and used the technique for stiffening stuffed pieces (from my Giant Amigurumi ebook) to fix it.

Giant Gecko

My Giant Gecko gave me some problems at first – after using the yardage calculator from my giant amigurumi ebook, I realised I didn’t have enough of any single yarn colour to make the whole gecko. I didn’t want to buy more yarn for my stashbusting project, so I decided to base my gecko (very loosely) on a neon day gecko – lime head, aqua body, teal legs.

I was very uncertain about this project when I’d crocheted all the pieces but not yet assembled anything – I was pretty sure it was going to look terrible! But I’d forgotten the PlanetJune maxim:

Trust The Pattern

…I give this advice all the time, but forgot to take it myself!

Lots of my designs can look weird and wrong when you’re partway through making them, but if you just trust the pattern and follow along with all the steps, it magically comes together in the end. (That’s why I often need to tweak my prototypes multiple times before everything comes together in a way that looks deceptively simple in the final pattern. )

And yes, my gecko turned out just like I’d originally imagined he would:

I kept my fingers crossed that I’d be able to make the legs work without the original pipe cleaners inside them – imagine how large the pipe cleaners would have to be to work for a 3-ft long gecko! With normal amigurumi, you can skip the wires in the legs and just stitch the legs into a fixed bent position, but I wasn’t sure that technique would hold up with this size and weight.

Although my giant gecko’s legs won’t support his weight, they don’t have to – his belly touches the floor and the legs just stick out to the sides, so there was no problem in the end. He looks pretty realistic considering he’s 9 times larger than a real neon day gecko!

Giant Tortoise

And then there’s my Giant Tortoise! I actually made him at the same time I made all the normal-sized tortoises for my Tortoise pattern, but I never got around to showing him to you.

He looks very similar to a real-life giant tortoise in shape and size – I love him so much! And isn’t he cute with all the ‘baby’ (aka regular-sized) tortoises?!

I didn’t make any changes at all to the pattern except for scaling up the hook and yarn to Giant size and using my standard Giant Amigurumi techniques.

Thanks to the double construction of the shell with the crocheted body inside, there’s nowhere with gaps for the stuffing to be exposed, and the finished tortoise is satisfyingly sturdy – as you can see, I sometimes use him as a footrest!

Crochet your Own Giant Amigurumi

Have I tempted you to try giant amigurumi for the first time? My ebook,The Complete Guide to Giant Amigurumi, will give you all my tips and tricks for upscaling a regular amigurumi pattern to giant size.

And here are the links to my crochet patterns for all the patterns I used here:

• Mushroom Collection
• Gecko
• Tortoise

Please send me a photo if you upscale any of my patterns – I always love to see the results! You can find me everywhere as @planetjune 🙂

We had to say our final goodbye to our beautiful cat Maui this week.

Although we knew it was coming, we’re still completely devastated to have lost our boy, and I know that many of you have got to know and love him over the years too. If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you’ll know that Maui has been a huge part of PlanetJune – he’s been my assistant, supervising my work, since the very beginning. And, of course, there would be no AmiCats designs without Maui as my muse!

But let’s try not be too sad – Maui has lived a long, happy and adventurous life, and we’re so grateful to have been with him for so long and to have so many beautiful memories. I’ll share a few moments with you today.

We adopted Maui from a shelter when he was a year old. When we adopted him, he was a very sweet but independent boy – he didn’t get along with other cats, which was perfect for us. He was always reserved with new people, but he adopted us right back immediately, rubbing around our ankles and purring as soon as we got him home.

He loved watching our birdfeeders out of the window, and the local squirrels loved to tease him through the window!

Whenever we left the house, he’d sit in the front window and watch us go – it was so cute to see his little face in the window.

Once he realised we’d be together forever, he mellowed and relaxed, and his favourite pastimes were sunbathing and snuggling with us.

And also eating… He really loved his food, and he was so smart that he figured out how to get his paw up into his feeder and sneak extra food. We had to change his feeder for a Maui-proof one eventually, so he didn’t get too fat!

Maui was our constant companion through 6 house moves and two moves halfway around the world and back. He was so strong and brave, and adapted quickly to every change – all he needed to be happy was to be with us.

checking out the snow in Ontario

checking out the view of Cape Town

Maui always loved the toys I made for him – you may remember seeing some of them here over the years (fuzzball and mouse, crinkle ball, cardboard scratcher, fishing toy). The lovely mouse I sewed for his third birthday in 2007 was his favourite and longest-lasting toy – it lost the felt ears after a year, but apart from that it’s still in one piece today?

And he somehow knew the difference between his toys and my yarn and amigurumi and never, ever tried to mess with my yarn!

When we added Maggie to our family in 2020, Maui took it in stride, as always. We bought him a cat tree so he could have a safe place to relax, and he loved curling up in there to survey the world or snooze the day away.

Maggie loved her brother and often slept at the foot of the cat tree to be close to him. They definitely treated each other like family, and they had lots of contented times sunbathing together on the rug by the window.

Maui has been a huge part of our lives for so long, and although the last few months of his decline have been heartbreaking, we had 16 amazing years of love together that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

His loss leaves a huge hole in our lives, but we’ll try to follow his example: to be strong and brave, adaptable, and always make the best of any situation.

Rest well, dearest Maui. You’ll always be with us.

The first annual PlanetJune Reindeer Games crochet-along has just finished, and it was a huge success! It was a lovely sociable way to end the year, and provided a good escape for everyone from all the usual end-of-year stresses.

Over the 2 month CAL, we had a very active time – 48 pages of chat! – and an amazing 104 completed projects:

Wow! Click through to see the Reindeer Games gallery on Ravelry, including credit for all the participants and links to all the patterns they used!

I’m going to make the Reindeer Games an annual event, so look out for my announcement next October if you’d like to take part in the 2022 CAL (or sign up for my monthly newsletter now so I can send you a reminder!)

In the meantime, I’m collecting feedback on how we can make the games better and smoother for the next run. The advantage of running my own event is that everything can be changed and improved, in collaboration with the PlanetJune community. There’s a thread in the PlanetJune Ravelry group where we can discuss suggestions and decide what changes can be made – I hope you’ll share your ideas there.

And please feel free to comment here too, especially if you don’t/can’t use Ravelry – having an (additional) off-Ravelry way to participate is one of the possible improvements I’d consider for next year, if people would appreciate that. If there’s another online location that you’d prefer to use instead of Ravelry, do let me know. A Facebook group? A Discord server? Something else?

Congratulations to everyone who participated in the first Reindeer Games, and thank you to everyone who makes the PlanetJune community such a friendly, welcoming environment. It’s a pleasure to be a part of it and to get to know you all – and to see the beautiful creations you make from my patterns 🙂

Writing my Year in Review post every year helps me to see what I’ve accomplished, think about what I’ve learnt, and decide what I’d like to do differently in the following year.

Who’d have thought that this year would be, in many ways, harder than 2020?!

This year, I’ve only published 7 new patterns all year – only one more than I managed in 2020! But considering everything else that’s been going on, I’m not letting myself feel bad about that.

While I didn’t publish any specific crochet tutorials this year, I was doing crochet-related research instead that will benefit us all in future! I organized my stash with my worsted weight yarn bobbins, and I completed two massive crochet investigations (Scaling Amigurumi and the huge Worsted Weight Yarn Comparison), both of which have helpful tables of results to help you with amigurumi-making.

My craft projects this year have helped me stay calm through the difficult times, as always. Diamond painting has definitely been a joyful discovery for me; it’s just mindless enough to be relaxing without being boring.

I crocheted ami-Maui and ami-Maggie, and I finished the year with a few more fun crochet projects for myself (I haven’t had the chance to blog about those yet, but there’s a sneak peek in the pic below).

And this reminds me that I haven’t done a stitch of knitting all year! I still haven’t had a chance to set up my knitting machine in my new studio, and I haven’t felt like picking up the needles either… I’m sure that’s about to change though – I always come back to my crafts eventually, and Maggie needs some new dog sweaters.?

I’ve also spent a lot of my ‘making’ time this year customizing curtains for the new house: including sheers and curtains, I’ve hemmed 32 panels to each fit the windows they cover – I only finished the last ones this week! And I’ve been baking bread – I’m making good use of the breadmaker my Mum bought for me as a housewarming gift:

Yes, I like experimenting with bread recipes!

So there’s been lots of creativity going on in 2021 – and that’s just the way I like it. 🙂

Business Report

In 2021 I pushed myself out of my comfort zone:

• 

  I gave an hour-long live presentation for the Kitchener-Waterloo Knitters’ Guild. It was an honour to be invited – it was their first ever crochet presentation, so I felt like I had something to prove, to try to explain some of the benefits of crochet to knitters! The presentation was given over Zoom, and despite my getting a little flustered and overheated under my studio lights, I had dozens of my amigurumi and crocheted accessories at the ready to illustrate my points, and I had lots of interest and good feedback, so I think it went well.

• 

  I also reached the astounding milestone of 100,000 subscribers to my YouTube channel (I’ll be writing a post about that when I receive my award!), and used this as an excuse to force myself to be brave enough to show my face on video for the first time ever – something I’ve been planning to do for years, but never got comfortable enough to make it happen until the presentation gave me some courage to film a special video to commemorate this occasion. (If you haven’t seen the video yet, take a look now!)

I made some big behind-the-scenes improvements:

• When the latest Windows update broke something in my workflow I invested in a professional desktop publishing software package. I’m still grappling with the learning curve (one of the reasons why I haven’t been able to publish more patterns this year) but I can already see how much smoother and more flexible the process is going to be in future.
• I managed to get my shop listed in the Google Shopping tab, and I’m a large fraction of the way to getting Google Seller Ratings enabled for PlanetJune. These will both increase my visibility in search results and hopefully lead to more sales on an ongoing basis.

And I had some more big projects on the go:

• 

  I set up a massive new annual crochet along – the PlanetJune Reindeer Games – for the holiday season, complete with special virtual medal graphics. Creating the games was a ton of work, but the first year has been a big success (blog post coming soon!) and it’ll be much easier to run the games in future years.

• And I signed a contract for a secret project that I can’t tell you about yet! I’ll be able to reveal the details some time next year. 😉

Personal Report

This year I’ve moved house (into our beautiful new forever home that wasn’t completely finished when we took possession, and only had the final fixes – and the fridge! – arrive this month, so it’s basically taken the entire year to get everything organised).

I’ve dealt with the decline of my beloved cat Maui, and now I’m adjusting to managing his kidney disease and diabetes. And I’m still struggling with my own ongoing fatigue issues.

Then there’s the ongoing stress of the times that we’re all going through. Things are different these days, and I often don’t have the energy to show up online for social media and all that stuff, even though I miss my online friends there and I know it would be ‘good for business’ to show up regularly. But I find social media overwhelming and exhausting, and I need to stay away from it most of the time to protect my mental health.

Speaking of mental health, I’m doing much better there – I’ve stopped needing therapy for the PTSD and anxiety disorder, and I feel so much better that I’ve been tapering off my anxiety meds for the past few months. It’s a very slow process – it takes weeks for the brain to adjust to each reduction – but I’m down to 1/8 of the minimum effective dose now, so I’ll be completely drug free soon!

Musings on Long-Term Self-Employment

Being self-employed means there’s no ladder to climb; no promotions or bonuses I can aim for, and yet, there is a reward for putting in 14 years of service (so far) at PlanetJune: having several hundred patterns in my catalogue thankfully means I don’t need to stick to a strict publishing schedule in order to stay afloat. So when external circumstances mean I can’t be very productive, that’s okay – I can still get by on sales from my past 14 years of design work.

I’m still just as passionate as ever about my work and my craft, and I’m not going anywhere, it’s just that it takes longer for me to produce anything new these days! Maybe that’ll change in future, and maybe not – it’s okay either way. Quality over quantity, always.

Looking Back

The common theme that runs through my 2021, and one I hadn’t noticed until looking at it all together like this, is that everything I’ve done (crochet research, tech improvements, trying new and scary things) has been like planting seeds that will continue to bear fruit in the future. So, looking at it that way, perhaps 2021 has been more productive than I’d realised…

Looking Forward

My overall goal for PlanetJune is to create work I can be proud of while making enough money to support the life I want to live. I’m not going to set specific goals for 2022 – I have a few big projects planned, and other than that we’ll see where inspiration strikes.

Last year, my wishes were for acceptance (of the things I can’t control), appreciation (of all the good things in my life), and inspiration (to keep moving forwards and trying new things). Those are still excellent guiding principles that I aim to live by, but as we head into the third year of the pandemic, I want to change the focus a bit.

So, my wishes for 2022 are for:

• resilience to keep going through the tough times
• grace to not beat myself up when reality falls short of expectation
• hope to look forward to the better things to come

I wish the same for you – and that you’ll be happy, healthy and safe in 2022. Happy New Year!

Just in time for the holiday season, and in honour of the PlanetJune Reindeer Games, allow me to present my latest design: the Reindeer/Caribou!

I’ve had a realistic reindeer on my list of ideas for the past few years, but, with the PlanetJune Reindeer Games CAL in full swing, this seemed like the perfect time to bring my idea to life. There are dozens of cartoony reindeer amigurumi patterns out there, but I’ve never seen one that actually looks like a real-life caribou!

Reindeer/Caribou Fun Facts

• Reindeer/Caribou are found in cold Northern climates around the world: Canada, Alaska, Scandinavia and Russia.
• Why two names? Although they are the same species, they are called Caribou in Canada and Alaska and Reindeer in Europe.
• In winter, their soft hoof pads retract to keep their feet warm and expose the sharp hoof rims, which let them dig through the snow to find their favourite food: reindeer lichen!
• They are the only deer species where the females have antlers as well as the males.
• And an extra fun fact for Christmas: Male reindeer shed their antlers before Christmas, while females don’t shed theirs until spring… That means, as all Santa’s reindeer have antlers, they must all be female! 😀

About the Pattern

I’ve tried to capture the essence of the Caribou in this pattern – long body, short legs, wide hooves, tiny tail, shoulder hump, colouring, and, of course, the spectacular antlers (more on those in a bit!)

I’ve included two versions in this pattern – as well as a realistic Caribou, with just a couple of modifications (larger eyes and a red nose), you can make your very own adorable Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer!

The most exciting part of this pattern has to be the antlers – each antler is all crocheted together, with no sewing involved! They are a little fiddly because they’re so thin, but I’ve explained it all step-by-step in the pattern, so take it slowly and you’ll end up with stunning realistically-shaped reindeer antlers.

Note: I do recommend you check out my Narrow Pointed Tubes tutorial (also linked in the pattern) if you’re not used to making narrow tubes or turning them right-side out – if you watch my video, you’ll know exactly what to expect when you make the branches of the antlers!

Buy Now

Ready to get started? Pick up my Reindeer/Caribou crochet pattern  from my shop right now. Or, if you’re not ready to make it just yet, add it to your Ravelry queue or favourites so you don’t forget about it:

I really hope you’ll enjoy this pattern, whether you want to make Rudolph as a Christmas gift for a special someone, a realistic Caribou, or some amigurumi Reindeer as holiday décor!

And, if you’re a Ravelry user, I do hope you’ll join us for the PlanetJune Reindeer Games – this crochet-along runs until the end of the year, and I’m hoping we’ll see enough amigurumi reindeer to have a full team to pull Santa’s sleigh this year. 🙂

After my review of diamond painting, I decided to jump in and buy some kits! I ordered my favourite Diamond Dotz kit – the Graceful Swimmer sea turtle – and I also picked up a cheap but pretty kit from amazon of a purple-tinted landscape so I could compare the quality of the two.

Quality

I’d expect the quality of an expensive kit to be higher than a cheap kit, but what are the actual differences, and do they affect the appearance of the end product and/or how enjoyable the kit is to make? Let’s take a look…

Price: I paid $49 (Canadian dollars) + tax for my Diamond Dotz kit, and only $8 + tax for my amazon cheapy! Although the branded kit is much larger than my cheap one, the smaller Diamond Dotz kits don’t cost much less ($40ish) so there’s still a massive difference in price between them and the unbranded kits.

Packaging: The Diamond Dotz canvas was rolled neatly in a protective box, so it had no creases. The cheap canvas was folded flat around the diamond packets, so the canvas was very creased and it wouldn’t lie flat when I first opened it (although it did flatten out when the diamonds were added).

Canvas: The canvas backing is definitely nicer on the expensive kit, but I’m not sure that matters at all – you won’t see the fabric once the piece is finished and it’s been framed or mounted.

The cheap kit (left) has a rougher canvas backing that’s not finished as nicely as the more expensive kit (right).

Tools: Although the tools provided with both kits are similar, the Diamond Dotz tool has a comfort foam grip, the tray has a spout to pour unused diamonds neatly back into their bag without spillage, and the pink wax comes in a little plastic jar.

I prefer the Diamond Dotz toolkit (left) because of the foam grip on the tool and the spout on the tray.

Diamonds: My Diamond Dotz kit has square diamonds, and the unbranded kit has round ones (more on that later…). Both kits included far more diamonds than needed to complete the picture. This is intentional, as some of the plastic diamonds will always be flawed, so you can just discard any that would detract from your finished picture without worrying that you’ll run out.

Misshapes, holes, extra material, blobs – you can expect to find a few of these in every kit

Interestingly, I actually found far more flawed diamonds in the expensive kit than in the cheap kit! In both cases, though, there were so many spares that I had dozens of every colour left at the end, despite being very picky and discarding any with the slightest imperfection, so the flaws weren’t a problem in either case.

Adhesion: With my cheap kit, a small section of the adhesive surface stuck to the plastic cover sheet along one of the creases where the canvas had been folded to ship. When I pulled back the cover sheet, the adhesive came away with it, so there was no glue to stick the diamonds to in that area. Apart from that one area, the adhesive surface worked well.

Oh no! The diamonds just won’t stick in this patch where the letters are visible!

Even though my expensive kit was many times larger, I had no problems at all with adhesion – every diamond stuck down perfectly.

Diamond Shape

While the diamond shape happens to be a difference between my kits, it’s just something to be aware of. Neither round nor square diamonds is necessarily a better or higher quality choice.

• Square diamonds fill the entire picture without any spaces, so they give an extra-shiny and neat finish. It’s satisfying to line them all up perfectly and the result is stunning, but it is a bit slow and fiddly to place each one exactly straight.
  
• Round diamonds are very fast to place, as you don’t need to orient them. A little of the backing canvas shows through between the circles, but it’s so much faster and easier to do, it makes for a joyful project!
  

I’d definitely recommend choosing a kit with round diamonds if:

• you’re buying a kit for a child to use
• you have less dexterity in your hands or any vision problems
• you want a very relaxing project

But if you like a little more of a challenge, the square diamonds give a brilliant result.

I did have one small issue with the round diamonds on my cheap kit: some of the letter symbols were so large that there was no way to cover the entire symbol with the diamond. You can only see it if you look closely:

Can you see the tiny dots of black below the diamonds in the middle of this photo?

It’s very minor, but it frustrates me, as this would have been easy to avoid (don’t use the largest letters M and W as symbols, or use a slightly smaller font when printing the design). Although this wouldn’t happen with square diamonds as there are no spaces between the diamonds for the backing to show through, this is a flaw in this specific kit design, not a problem with using round diamonds in general, so don’t let this put you off round diamonds!

Misleading Imagery

Here’s where things could go wrong if you buy a cheap kit – I recommend you check that the images you see online include a shot of the finished diamond painting or the chart you’ll receive, not just the original artwork the design is based on.

Branded kits like my Diamond Dotz turtle show a picture of the finished product on the box, so you know exactly what you can expect from the kit you’ll be making.

My finished project is lovely! And it looks exactly as I expected it would from the box art.

The cheap Chinese kits you can find on Amazon (for example) often only show the original artwork the kit was based on in their listing photos, and the image you’ll be forming will look very blocky and pixelated in comparison. There’s nothing wrong with buying one of these kits, provided you realise what you’re getting. For example, here’s an amazon listing photo (left) and what they left out of the listing: a photo of the completed kit (right):

I won’t leave you a link to this kit, as I’m not trying to call out this one in particular; this is just one of many misleading examples. You can see how, if you’re buying a kit based on the photo on the left, you may be surprised or disappointed if your artwork ends up looking like the image on the right – they are definitely not the same…

The listings also usually show a digital mockups of ‘the finished kit on a wall’ – not only is the image completely different from the kit you’re buying, but the size is misleading too! For example, here’s a ‘photo’ of my cheap kit:

Let’s compare that with my completed kit:

It’s less than 10″ (25cm) square, but the listing image above makes it look twice that size, far more detailed than it is, and pure purple instead of mostly pink!

In general, more abstract and less detailed source images work better for any pixel art, like cross stitch, perler beads, etc. The detail is limited to the size of your pixels (diamonds in this case) – you can’t create a fine line when your ‘paintbrush’ is the width of a diamond! A larger canvas allows for more pixels and therefore more detail.

I’d never consider buying a kit without seeing at least a digitally-rendered example of how the finished product is actually supposed to look. So I recommend, if you’re buying a cheap kit from amazon or similar, you check the reviews for those that include images and see if someone has posted a photo of their finished project. That way, you’ll know in advance whether you’ll like the result, and you won’t be disappointed.

Verdict

I’m happy with both my kits, for different reasons. The square diamonds with the large canvas took a long time and made a beautiful picture, and the round diamonds with the small canvas made for a satisfyingly quick, relaxing project.

With the branded kit, I knew exactly what I was getting and what the finished product would look like, and I imagine the image was carefully selected and customized by hand to be ideal for a diamond painting.

With the cheap kit, I suspect an automated process generated the chart from a pretty picture with little manual input, but if you choose your kit carefully, you can still end up with a lovely result at a fraction of the cost of a branded kit. (I actually prefer the pinky shades in my kit to the purple digital mockup, so I’m not at all disappointed.)

I do have one other recommendation if you’re using budget-friendly kits: I really loved the foam grip and the tray with a spout in my Diamond Dotz kit, so I’d recommend you upgrade your tools! For example, you can buy a Diamond Dotz Accessory Kit (amazon link) including 2 tools, 2 foam grips, 2 trays with spouts and 2 spare wax blocks for only a few dollars. I always recommend investing in good tools, and here’s no exception. You can reuse the same tool and tray while you make as many cheap kits as you want!

It definitely wasn’t cheap, but I think my beautiful sea turtle kit was worth the cost – the square gems are so even and sparkly, and I love the picture!

Next up in my diamond painting adventure…

• Figuring out how to frame my sea turtle art so I can enjoy it! I’ve bought some wood and I’m going to attempt to mount it like a stretched canvas (although I’m not sure exactly how yet). More on that in my next diamond painting update!
• I also need to fix that annoying bare spot in my pink landscape diamond painting. I’ve done some research and it sounds like the solution to this is to buy ‘repositionable tacky glue’ to re-tack the surface – I’ll report back on how that worked out next time, too…

Team PlanetJune had such a blast with the Ravellenic Games last summer, we decided that our Christmas crochet-along this year will be a Team PlanetJune special event!

The first annual PlanetJune Reindeer Games begins on Monday November 1st, and I hope you’ll join us 🙂

Crochet anything PlanetJune as part of the PlanetJune Reindeer Games 2021 (Monday, Nov 1 – Friday, Dec 31). This is a Team PlanetJune event, hosted in the PlanetJune Ravelry group, with a similar concept to the Ravellenic Games: the idea is to challenge yourself by starting and finishing crochet project(s) before the end of the year.

It’s just for fun, like a CAL but you get to choose your projects – anything PlanetJune, including projects from my books – and earn virtual awards! During the Games, we all cheer each other on to complete our chosen projects. Our team captains will award you with your Reindeer Village medals and Antlers as you complete your project(s).

Santa and all 9 reindeer have set up their stalls in the Reindeer Games Village – have a virtual wander around and choose which you’ll visit first:

• Santa’s Toy Shop – toys
• Rudolph’s Gingerbread House – home/décor
• Dasher’s Scarf Stand – scarves
• Dancer’s Winter Wear – hats and mitts
• Prancer’s WIPs Wrapping – any project started before the Games
• Vixen’s Shawl Stall – shawls and wraps
• Comet’s Closet – sweaters and other garments
• Cupid’s Cowl Corner – cowls and neckwarmers
• Donner’s Blanket Bazaar – blankets and afghans
• Blitzen’s Bag Bonanza – bags and purses

You’ll receive the medal for the stall you ‘visited’ once you’ve finish your project! And you can also receive bonus Antler awards for your projects:

• Santa’s Helper – showing team spirit
• Angel – charity project
• Carolling – crochet in public
• Cookie Decorator – colourwork
• Deck the Halls – embellishments
• Heirloom – using a PJ pattern you’ve owned for more than 3 months
• Ice Sculptor – techniques: cables, lace or Tunisian
• Snowman – modifying the base pattern
• Master Wrapper – complete 3 WIP projects
• Super Elf – complete any 3 projects
• Bah! Humbug! – complete a project on Christmas Eve
• Fireworks – complete a project on New Year’s Eve
• Have a Cookie – a special antler for those of us who try our best but don’t quite get to the finish line

Whether you’re crocheting your favourite PlanetJune patterns as Christmas gifts, items to sell at craft fairs or online, toys for charity, or projects for yourself, we’re ready to encourage you to complete your goals and to celebrate your successes with you!

And, even if you think you may not have time to complete a project, you’re very welcome to join the team for the community spirit and friendly chat. There’s something about PlanetJune that attracts the kindest and most supportive people, and, if you enjoy PlanetJune patterns, you’re already part of our community – do come over and say hello!

Team PlanetJune in the Rav Games 2021

To give you an idea of what to expect, in the Ravellenic Games last summer, Team PlanetJune completed 54 projects, and enjoyed 56 pages of chat! Here’s a roundup of all the wonderful PlanetJune projects that we completed in just 2 weeks:

Isn’t it lovely to see the variety of projects and be inspired by what other people are making? I expect the project mix will look somewhat different for the Reindeer Games, with more Christmas decorations and warm accessories – but who knows! You’ll have to join in to find out…

Join us for the Reindeer Games!

While the Ravellenic Games is a fast-paced sprint, the Reindeer Games is more of a gentle stroll together towards the holidays. The rules are relaxed, the timeline is extended, and having fun and supporting each other is the main goal.

If that sounds good to you, please hop over to the PlanetJune group on Ravelry, and leave a message saying “I’m in!” in the Reindeer Games thread. We look forward to welcoming you into our virtual Reindeer Games Village. 🙂