PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

I’ve been upgrading the PlanetJune shop to make things a bit clearer. There’s a new tabbed interface for each product, so you can quickly find the information you need without having to scroll down the page:

I’ve also added a review capability, so you can see what other people thought of my products before you buy. I only launched this yesterday, so I only have 9 reviews as I write this post. A review system is no help to anyone unless there are actually some reviews for potential customers to read, so I’d like to ask for your help…

Have you bought any of my patterns, eyes, noses, stitch markers or stuffing tools? Is there anything about them that you’d like to share with the world? Please write a review! It’s easy to do – just browse to the item you want to review, click the Reviews tab and then click write a review.

As a small incentive (and this will be an ongoing thing, not a one-off promotion), all reviews will automatically be entered into a monthly draw to win a free pattern of your choice. So review 10 of my products and you’ll get 10 entries into the draw!

I hope these reviews will be useful to other people, and I encourage you to be honest – I will only moderate them for profanity or other inappropriate comments. Although I hope you won’t feel the need to leave a 1 star review, if that’s what you truly think of a product, that’s okay with me. And you’ll still be entered into the draw 🙂

Thanks very much for your help – I really appreciate it – and good luck in the monthly draws!

A quick aside first: have you noticed I’ve made a favicon for PlanetJune? It was a challenge coming up with something recognisable at such a small size, so I just made a little bear in my site colours:

I think it’s cute! I hope it’ll help people to spot PlanetJune in the vast sea of websites out there. That’s one more task I can cross off my to-do list 🙂

The real point of this post is to let you know about the blog tour for Amy O’Neill Houck’s new book, Crochet for Bears to Wear. The tour starts today at Craftzine, where you can download a free pattern from the book!

Amy has a list of all the daily stops on her blog tour. There are some fantastic crochet bloggers represented here, so visit all the stops and, as an added bonus, you might find some new blogs to follow!

My stop is next Monday, when I’ll be reviewing the book and testing one of the patterns. As you can see from the photos below, my Fuzzy Bear loves accessories, so I’ll be crocheting him his own custom-sized piece of clothing…

Fuzzy Bear loves to play dress-up

I’ll also have a copy of Crochet for Bears to Wear to give away to one of my lovely readers, so don’t forget to check back here on Monday for a chance to win! 🙂

I bet many of you (unless you saw my tweets last weekend) are thinking ‘huh?’ right about now… But if you’re like me (a crocheter who doesn’t knit) you’re going to love this craft: knooking is knitting with a crochet hook. No, it’s not tunisian crochet, or any other type of crochet; when you knook you form genuine knitted stitches. The finished product is indistinguishable from a knit piece. Isn’t that cool?

I just don’t get along with the pointy sticks and I’ve often wished I could just put a hook on the end of a knitting needle so I could snag those stitches more easily, so the idea of knooking was very appealing. You do need to use a special hook to knook with – it has to be straight all the way down the length (i.e. no wider thumb grip) and have some way to attach a cord to the non-hooked end. You can modify a regular crochet hook, or a locker hook makes the perfect starter tool – you can find it in most craft stores, and it’s approximately equivalent in size to a G hook.

This weekend I had some time on my hands and thought I’d finally give knooking a try. I must be a bit of a masochist – I didn’t want to start with a boring swatch or dishcloth pattern; I wanted something that I could actually use once I’d finished it. I’d seen a free knitting pattern a few weeks ago for a Shaun the Sheep DS case and it seemed like it may be a feasible (and cute!) first project. Luckily it starts with the back, which is plain, before moving to the colourwork on the front, so I figured I’d have time to get used to the knit and purl stitches before introducing another element of difficulty.

First knooking attempt in progress

Here it is after getting 2/3 through the back. (The hole at the top right is a buttonhole, not a mistake.) You can see my white cord running through the active stitches at the bottom of the picture. Each time you complete a row, you slide the stitches down off the bottom of the hook onto the cord, and then work into them again for the next row.

I think I may have wrapped the yarn wrongly a couple of times, because there are a couple of flubs in my beautiful knitted fabric. Also, my yarn was a bit splitty, which didn’t help when trying to form those awkward purl stitches. I was surprised that my stitches looked so even, considering this was my first ever attempt at knooking.

The colourwork was easier than I’d anticipated. I worked the design backwards (mirror image) because I’m left-handed and wasn’t 100% sure if knit stitches are symmetrical (although I think they are) so I thought I’d play it safe. I left yarn ends dangling on the inside while I knooked, and wove them all in later. My only difficulty was my choice of a bouclé yarn for the ‘wool’: it turns out that bouclé is just as challenging to knook with as it is to crochet with!

Before blocking

My finished piece was curling up a lot at the edges, so I used makeshift blocking wires (actually floral wire – I don’t have much need for real blocking wires in my daily life) and some steam blocking to straighten it out (yes, you can steam block acrylic!).

Blocking wires in place

When it was dry, I seamed the sides and attached some buttons to the top. I wasn’t sure how to make the eyes, but in the end I made some from black and white felt strengthened with embroidered buttonhole stitches around the edges. The whole project cost me nothing: all the materials came from my stash (yay!) – even the buttons!

Front

I could see by the end (the top border) that I’d really got the hang of it: my stitches were much more consistent than they had been on the back of the piece, although they really hadn’t been bad to start with. I think I can say that I’ve conquered the basics of knooking, and I’m looking forward to trying out another knitting pattern with my hook!

Back

Have I captured your interest? If you’d like to try knooking, I recommend you check out the Knooking blog (I learnt how to knook from Jen’s excellent how-to videos) and Knooking Ravelry group 🙂

Maui insisted on ‘helping’ with the photoshoot!

Would you prefer to see the video tutorial demonstrating this method? If not, read on:

I’ve written before about how there are several ways you can finish off a closed piece in amigurumi, and there’s no one ‘best’ method for closing that remaining hole to give the neatest finish. I’d like to officially change my opinion on that point! Here are my previous results:

Since I wrote that post, I’ve been doing more experimenting, and I think I’ve finally found the definitive method to give the best possible finish to a closed piece in amigurumi. It works almost like a Magic Ring (and we all know how good that is!) so that’s why I’ve named this technique the Ultimate Finish for amigurumi:

Where’s the hole? This is the beauty of the Ultimate Finish

(Of course, to get the best finish, you’ll also want to use the Invisible Decrease instead of sc2tog for all your decreases – but that goes without saying, right?)

Ultimate Finish for Amigurumi

The almost-finished stuffed piece, with 6 sc remaining:

Cut the yarn, leaving a long yarn end. Draw the end through the final loop on the hook and thread it onto a yarn needle.

You’ll be using the front loops only for the next stage; those are the loops that are furthest from the hole:

Working in the same direction as you crochet (clockwise for right-handers; anticlockwise for left-handers), insert your needle under the front loop of the next stitch, so the needle goes from the centre of the hole to the outside (below, left). Draw the yarn taut.

Move to the next stitch and repeat: insert the hook under the front loop of the stitch, again going from the middle of the hole to the outside (below, right). Draw the yarn taut, but don’t tighten it fully yet.

Repeat for the remaining stitches until you have woven the needle through all 6 stitches, going from the middle to the outside each time (below, left). Now pull the yarn tight (below, right). The hole will close up just like a magic ring! It does leave a small bump on the outside though…

To get rid of the bump, insert the needle through the middle of the ring you’ve created, going into the piece, and bring it out an inch or two away. Pull the yarn tight and the bump at the closed end will disappear, leaving a nice smooth finish.

Finally, snip the end close to the surface, and the cut end will retract back inside the piece.

It’s nothing revolutionary, but weaving through the loops in this way (always going from middle to outside) and then pulling it closed like a magic ring really does give the best finish I’ve found. Give it a go and let me know what you think of my Ultimate Finish!

Loved this tutorial? I have so many more amigurumi tips and tricks to share with you!

Boost your amigurumi skills with my latest book, The Essential Guide to Amigurumi, your comprehensive guide to amigurumi techniques and tips.

Do you find my tutorials helpful? If so, please consider making a contribution towards my time so I can continue to create clear and concise tutorials for you:

Thank you so much for your support! Now click below for loads more crochet video and photo tutorials (and do let me know what else you’d like me to cover in future tutorials…)

Welcome to the new PlanetJune webserver! You should notice a huge speed difference from the old site – no more sluggish pageloads and pageload errors (I hope!). This was a desperate emergency move on my part to try to fix the problems, but I’ve now got a reliable new webhost, a virtual server of my own, and plenty of room to grow without causing any more problems, so it was all worthwhile!

I have also finally set up a PlanetJune group on Ravelry. If you have a Ravelry account, please feel free to join!

And now onto some new products available in the PlanetJune store:

I’ve been listening to your requests for amigurumi noses and smaller clear eyes, so I’ve just added 6mm and 8mm clear eyes to the shop, and also two shapes of safety noses (oval and triangle).

In case you don’t know about clear eyes, they are very versatile – they have a black pupil and clear iris, and by painting the backs (the flat side) or putting felt behind them, you can colour the irises any shade you wish! I now carry all sizes from 6mm to 15mm, so that should cover any project you need eyes for. (Of course, I still have all sizes 4.5mm-15mm in solid black too.)

Safety noses work exactly like safety eyes – they come in 2 parts: a front, and a locking washer. If you need a nice black shiny nose for your amigurumi, check these out! I have oval and triangular noses in stock, in two different sizes for each shape.

Here’s a triangular nose in action!

You can find all my eyes and noses in the Eyes, Tools & Accessories category of my shop 🙂

Some of you may have experienced problems when trying to access PlanetJune lately. I’ve been complaining to my webhost for months about intermittent errors that happen sometimes, for some people, and they haven’t been able to help at all – all they said was that there were no server problems. It’s been highly frustrating!

They finally admitted on Thursday (coincidentally, just after I renewed with them for another year – I hope they will give me a refund!) that my website is just too popular for them to handle:

You are receiving a very large amount of daily traffic to your sites and this is the cause of the long loading times and 503 errors. This kind of traffic is much too large for a shared hosting environment. I would recommend moving your sites to a VPS or dedicated hosting provider.

So, I’ve just signed up for a new and expensive VPS (virtual private server). This means that I won’t be sharing system resources with any other people any more, and I should have more than enough resources for PlanetJune.com pages (and FoldingTrees.com pages, incidentally) to always load quickly and without errors 🙂

I have another announcement and a new amigurumi tutorial for you, but I’ll save them until you can see them on the new server – there’s a waiting period until “planetjune.com” points to the new server (it takes a couple of days). If you’ve been having problems loading my shop or any other pages, these should all be resolved shortly – thank you so much for your patience!

A little ‘newsy’ post today. The Detail Stuffing Tools are back in stock, and I aim to keep them in stock permanently from now on. Thanks to everyone who ordered one already; I mailed out all the backorders yesterday (unless you also ordered out of stock eyes in which case they’ll be on their way tomorrow; I just didn’t anticipate getting so many orders over the past couple of weeks!) This is what my poor Post Office lady had to deal with yesterday:

Eek! If only I could print postage online, I’d save hours waiting at the Post Office and writing out customs labels, but Canada Post in their infinite wisdom have decided that the ‘Light Packet’ rate can only be obtained in person at the Post Office…

And the reviews of the stuffing tool have started to come in! I know my tool is now indispensible to me – I keep one with every in-progress crochet project – but it’s great to hear that other people like it too. Firstly, a review by Jessica (aka Plushroom Soup), a plush artist and one of the first people to snap up my new tool on launch day. She says:

This little number may not look like much, but boy is it handy! I’ve used everything in the book trying to more efficiently stuff tiny plush parts (tiny fingers and toes are the worst!)—chopsticks, knitting needles, wooden dowels, doll stuffing forks, the Stuff It tool, etc. But nothing had good enough grip for the stuffing; the tools would just slide right through. Wooden dowels were the closest to providing what I needed, but I still struggled. Especially because tiny dowels have a tendency to snap in half while I’m stuffing.

Enter the Detail Stuffing Tool! This neat tool makes quick work of stuffing tiny parts. It’s extremely easy to use and has excellent grip for the stuffing. No more slipping, and stuffing right where I need it.

You can read the rest of her Detail Stuffing Tool review at Plushroom Soup!

And secondly, did you know that March is National Crochet Month? It’s nice to see crochet getting more recognition, although I’d like to see an International Crochet Month next time… Silverlotus, a cross-stitcher and knitter, and novice crocheter (although you wouldn’t guess that from her work!) has written a lovely post about a certain crochet designer for National Crochet Month, including this little snippet about my Stuffing Tool:

Just this month June introduced her new detail stuffing tool, which helps make stuffing little amigurumi creations so much easier. And, my dear cross stitching readers, I know it would make stuffing biscornus and ornaments much, much easier too. I recommend it highly.

See her full review of me (*blush*) on her blog, Reflections in the Pond.

Yay, thanks so much, ladies! If you’ve bought my Detail Stuffing Tool, I’d love to know what you think of it too!

And if you’re still saying “huh? stuffing tool?” here’s my demo video so you can see what all the fuss is about:

Allow me to introduce the latest member of my AmiDogs family: the Boxer!

He’s about 6″ long and worked in brown, white and black worsted weight yarn. I decided to go with natural, floppy ears, instead of the cropped pointy ones, but if you’re desperate for a Boxer with sticking-up ears, I’ve also included modifications for that in the pattern 🙂

It’s hard to believe that the Boxer is my 15th AmiDogs design! My first three AmiDogs were published in July 2007 – that’s almost 3 years ago. Hmm, I suppose that 15 breeds in 3 years doesn’t sound quite so impressive! But I have to go slowly with designing them or I get really bored (it’s having to make and attach all those endless legs!). And a bored June is not a creative and happy June, so it may be another few months before I start on the next batch of AmiDogs.

Bit of a size difference going on here!

Now I’ve finished another three designs, AmiDogs Set 5 (Great Dane, Airedale Terrier and Boxer) is also ready to go. But if you’d like to mix and match your own three favourite breeds, you can use the Custom Set feature in my shop to choose any 3 dog breeds for the same special price.

I hope you like my boxer. It took a while to get the patterning on the face and muzzle the way I wanted it, but I think I’ve captured that special boxer quality!