PlanetJune Blog: Latest News, Patterns and Tutorials

Yesterday on Twitter I let slip that I had just turned in the manuscript for my new book! I’m so excited – I’ve been wanting to write this book for a long time and I’ve finally had the chance. I’ll share details of the book itself closer to publication – there’s still a long process of editing and printing to go through before it’ll hit the shelves.

This is the big secret project I’ve been alluding to for months, and the reason why I haven’t been blogging as much as I’d like to for a long time – so now I have some catching up to do! I’ve been making lists of things I’d like to do ‘when I finish the book’ – new patterns, new products for the shop, and a lot of improvements I’d like to make to the website. And my craft room/office is in serious need of organisation…

As I’m the photographer as well as the author of my book, I had to develop some novel methods for taking print-quality photos with only two hands at my disposal! I thought I’d share the method I came up with for taking step-by-step photos that include my hands – you’ll see the benefit of this when I next make a tutorial, as the pictures should be much improved with this new setup.

(By the way, in case you’re wondering how I took this shot of myself at work, I used a 2nd camera on a 2nd tripod with a 10-second self-timer!)

A: White bristol board used as a seamless backdrop

B: 2 very bright lamps aimed at the backdrop to make it as white as possible in the photos

C: 2 less bright lamps aimed at my hands (one on each side of the camera) to light them without shadows

D: This is where the camera is pointing – at my hands

E: My DSLR camera on a tripod, angled so that I can comfortably look through the viewfinder as I sit

F: (Out of shot) Remote detonator control for my camera so that I can operate it with my toe when I have the perfect shot set up

I bought the remote control on eBay and it’s literally changed my photo-taking life. I’ve always had to take my tutorial photos by setting up the shot, moving my right hand to press the shutter release while keeping my left hand hand still, then scrambling to get my right hand back into position before the 10-second timer ran down and the picture was taken… Now I can just press the remote button with my toe (minimal dexterity required) at the appropriate time and I don’t need to use the camera’s timer at all. Huge, huge improvement.

Of course, this isn’t the only way, or even the best way, to light for this kind of photography, but it works for me and only cost me 2 cheap IKEA work lamps, 2 clip-on spotlights, and a sheet of bristol board, all of which I already had from my light box (shown below, click through if you’d like details of that too):

So, when you see the clear and helpful pictures in my new book, you’ll know exactly how I managed to take them – I hope this hasn’t ruined the magic! But seriously, if you make tutorials, I hope this little glimpse into my lighting setup has been helpful 🙂

Over Christmas, we watched David Attenborough’s fantastic Life series, and I’ve had tiny frogs on the brain ever since…

I worked so hard all day yesterday (on the secret project) that I was begging myself to do something relaxing and unrelated to work last night, so I got out the polymer clay and started mixing colours to make a Strawberry Poison-Dart Frog like the one that captured my imagination on Life. While we watched a movie on TV, I played with the FIMO and, 2 hours later, this is what I ended up with:

Strawberry poison-dart frogs (Dendrobates pumilio) are found in several colour morphs, but the most common (the one I made) is called Blue Jeans for its blue legs – isn’t that adorable?!

I was aiming for a life-sized sculpture – David Attenborough had said that they are only 1 inch long and I’d written that down in my ‘ideas’ notebook along with my sketch – but I didn’t quite manage that. My frog’s body is 1 1/4″ long and including the legs sticking out to front and back, the finished sculpture is 1 3/4″ long (I have small hands, so it’s probably smaller than these photos make it look).

I’ve surprised myself – I didn’t know I could do this! Yes, it did take me 2 hours, but most of that was spent on the legs. I hadn’t really considered that I’d have to make 16 teeny tiny frog toes until I got to them – not an easy task! I’m happiest with the shaping of the red clay around the eyes – it turned out exactly how I’d hoped.

I think my crafting ‘style’ may be to make things so cleanly that they look like they’d be really easy to make, even though they aren’t. I see it in my crochet designs too – I simplify the shapes and colours to make my patterns easy to follow, but it’s finding a way to simplify them but to keep the most important features of whatever I’m trying to make where this ‘style’ comes into play.

There seems to be a crossover between the different crafts that I do: I don’t think I could have made this frog without my years of examining the shapes of animals for my crochet patterns. I suppose you could call it an “artist’s eye”, although that sounds a bit pretentious so I won’t do that! But it’s definitely interesting how my experience in one medium is indirectly improving my skill and confidence in a completely different medium.

Maybe I should make a matching frog in crochet and compare the two! What do you think?

Would you believe I made this pattern over Christmas, and haven’t had a chance to publish it yet?! Time to change that – please allow me to introduce you to my Airedale Terrier. Called ‘King of Terriers’ because it is the largest British terrier, it has a very distinctive appearance with its squared-off body shape and squared-off face!

My Airedale pattern comes with instructions to give it a fluffy beard, and instructions to make one with just the square muzzle shape and no additional beard (it looks more like an adorable Airedale puppy this way!) so you can take your pick and choose the look you prefer. The AmiDogs Airedale Terrier amigurumi crochet pattern is now available in the PlanetJune shop!

If you’re tempted by my AmiDogs patterns (the Airedale is the 14th in the series!) don’t forget that when you pick a custom set of your favourite three breeds, you get the third pattern for half price! To take advantage of this, choose the AmiDogs Custom Set listing in the shop (you won’t get the discount if you add three patterns individually to your cart).

Have I missed your favourite breed(s)? I’ll be designing more AmiDogs patterns this year, and I’d love to know in advance which breeds might be popular (although I have a few on my ‘must do’ list already!). If you don’t see your favourites in the little pics above, please leave me a comment with your suggestions and I’ll take them into account when I’m picking new breeds to add to my kennel 😀

…and that means it’s time to wrap up the Groundhog-along!

First, let’s cover the all-important prognostication: will we have 6 more weeks of winter? Punxsutawney Phil, Shubenacadie Sam and Wiarton Willie all saw their shadows this morning, forecasting 6 more weeks of winter. But, in my totally overcast Waterloo garden, my amigurumi ‘hog had a different story to tell, saying “I see no shadow. Please can I get out of this snow and get back in the warm? My tail is all wet!” (He’s a little spoilt from living in the lap of luxury on my desk all month). So that’s one vote for an early spring!

Now let’s take a look at some of the other amigurumi groundhogs! (All the following photos are copyright their respective owners.)

Other ‘no shadow’ votes come from mallallory‘s Japanese groundhog and IdaDown‘s tiny Aussie Bruce (a mini-hog at only 2″ tall!), although as they are clearly enjoying non-wintery weather already, I’m not sure how much stock to put in their predictions!

Refashionology‘s Gretchen (note the cute embroidered eyes) and sarahwww‘s little guy both wrapped up warm in knitted scarves!

SparklyShiny made 2 sizes of groundhog using different sized hooks, and Craftygal1965 made a cool albino groundhog!

AnnetePetavy‘s Marmotte says hello from France, and MissieZee‘s groundhog was a destashing project (yay!)

DragonYady‘s Shane and Mortaine‘s Gordon’s Groundhog.

Silverlotus‘s groundhog and kpwerker‘s aptly-named Ned Ryerson – BING!

Hattalahutta‘s groundhog reports no shadow = early spring for Norway! Veggie‘s little guy looks like he might not have enough light to see his shadow either way, but he’s still cute 🙂

SisterDiane’s hog says “Sure, I saw my shadow. But I chose to ignore it.” And kitchensinkdye’s Desmond is crocheted from two shades of her own gorgeous hand-dyed yarn! Very cool.

Kingscrown‘s groundhog has a lovely variegated colouring, and futuregirl‘s ‘Hog Along Cassidy has a ginger topknot!

xo-sonja‘s Big G is fashionably late to the Groundhog Day party in his red scarf! And last but not least, here’s seamaiden75‘s sweet little groundhog!

Aren’t they all great? It’s been so much fun seeing everyone working on them all at once, using different yarns and their own special touches. There are still loads of unfinished projects on the Ravelry group, so I’ll keep updating this post when more finished pics are posted – check back later for more groundhog goodness 🙂 (Have I missed your hog? Email me with a pic and I’ll add it!)

And now for the all-important question: did your groundhog see his shadow this morning?!

Today is my furbaby Maui’s 6th birthday. (Well, we adopted him when he was a year old, so we don’t know his actual birthday, but we settled on this date for him so it wouldn’t be too close to Christmas.) If you don’t know my lovely boy, here he is:

Awww, handsome cat!

The actual subject of this post is making toys for your cat, and whether it’s worth the effort. I’d like to demonstrate with a couple of toys that I made for Maui three years ago (please excuse the photos – my photographic skills have clearly improved since 2007!)…

Looking at my crochet pattern sales over the past few years, one of my least popular patterns has been my poor neglected AquaAmi Polar Bear, and I think I know why…

It’s entirely my own fault: I wanted to keep the design in line with the other AquaAmi (who are all about the shaping and have no features other than eyes), so I didn’t give my polar bear a black nose.

Although it was an intentional design decision, I’m pretty sure that was a mistake from the point of view of selling patterns; most people couldn’t see the implied (invisible) nose and so overlooked the pattern, which is actually a really nicely-shaped realistic polar bear design.

So, let’s try an experiment to see if I’m right… Today I am proud to (re-)introduce the AquaAmi Polar Bear crochet pattern!

Beautiful realistic shaping and a classic black bear nose make this a must-have pattern! Worked in a bulky weight yarn, he stands at about 8″ long and  5″ tall. You can easily resize the design down by simply using a worsted weight yarn and E hook to make a more compact bear, or a couple of baby bears to follow the mama bear around (oh, wouldn’t that be cute?!)

So, why not pick up a copy of the Polar Bear pattern today?

For those of you who’ve already purchased the pattern, don’t worry, this is essentially the exact same pattern you bought! But if you’d like a copy of the new version, please contact me and I’ll happily email it to you!

I’ll be very interested to see what (if any) effect this has on sales of the Polar Bear pattern. As my business evolves, I’ve been learning to focus more on what my customers want rather than arbitrary decisions that only make sense to me. For example, my patterns were originally categorized by ranges: AmiDogs, AquaAmi, AfricAmi, PocketAmi, etc, but the ranges were beginning to dictate which animal designs I could make, and navigating through those categories was not at all clear to anyone except me! Last year, I changed my shop categories to make it easier to find the type of pattern you’re looking for (Wild Animals, Farm Animals, Pets, etc etc) and I think that’s much more intuitive.

There are other things about PlanetJune.com that aren’t as user-friendly as I’d like. I’ve been compiling a list of things that could be better, and I plan to work my way through the improvements as the year progresses, so if you have any suggestions for other changes that would improve the whole ‘PlanetJune experience’ (LOL), please feel free to let me know so that I can add them to my list! Gentle and/or constructive criticism only, please – don’t make me cry 🙂

What a lovely surprise! Out of tens of thousands of projects posted on Craftster in 2009, my amigurumi Lemmings were chosen as one of the 5 best crochet projects of the year. Yay!

I’m a Craftster Best of 2009 Winner!

In other news, posts may be a little scarce for the next few weeks, as I’m entering the home stretch of the biggest, most exciting secret project I’ve ever been involved with!

The power of Twitter strikes again! A Twitter conversation between Groundhog Day fans @SisterDiane, @kpwerker, @kitchensinkdye and myself (@planetjune) led to a cool idea: We’re having a Groundhog-along!

Join in and crochet your amigurumi groundhog by Feb 2nd. You can join  the Groundhog-along 2010 Ravelry group and/or grab the above button image (created by Kim from my photo) for your blog. (Save the button image and upload it to your own server, please.)

If you don’t already use Ravelry, it’s free to join and a wonderful resource for all crocheters and knitters. But if you don’t want to join, send me a pic of your amigurumi groundhog before Feb 2nd and I’ll include it in my Groundhog-along wrap-up post on Groundhog Day!

(Don’t forget to get the Groundhog crochet pattern so you can add to our army of adorable crocheted groundhogs!)

I’m so excited that in one evening we’re up to 25 Groundhog-along group members already – this is going to be so much fun!