{"id":10818,"date":"2014-01-06T07:22:27","date_gmt":"2014-01-06T12:22:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/?p=10818"},"modified":"2017-04-28T06:29:37","modified_gmt":"2017-04-28T10:29:37","slug":"january-update-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/january-update-3\/","title":{"rendered":"January update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m still technically on holiday for another week, but in this age of smartphones and wifi it&#8217;s hard to ever take a complete break &#8211; there are always more questions to answer and people to help! I&#8217;m trying to keep work to a minimum, though, and enjoying some relaxing crafting time.<\/p>\n<h2>My Craft WIPs<\/h2>\n<p>It&#8217;s such a treat to have time to make things again! I&#8217;ve really missed this&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/wip_crossstitch.jpg\" alt=\"cross stitch wip by planetjune\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m making progress on my secret long term cross stitch project, which I started well over a year ago (and its companion piece over 2 years ago)! I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ll be finishing it any time soon, but that&#8217;s fine by me &#8211; it&#8217;s a nice relaxing project to pick up whenever I have time.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/wip_fimochameleon.jpg\" alt=\"fimo chameleon wip by planetjune\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been playing with my polymer clay for the first time in a couple of years. My FIMO is getting pretty old now, and took a long time to condition so it didn&#8217;t crack when I worked it. My hands were hurting after that, so I only got partway through sculpting the basic body shape of a chameleon before I had to stop. It was going well, but I don&#8217;t expect the clay to stay workable; I&#8217;ll probably have to ball up my efforts and start again from scratch for my next claying session (boo). At least I have a good chameleon colour mixed now, so I can get straight into sculpting next time!<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/wip_amigurumi2.jpg\" alt=\"mystery amigurumi wip by planetjune\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also started crocheting a very cute new design &#8211; all will be revealed in the next few weeks&#8230; It&#8217;s lovely to have time to think about amigurumi again, and, yes, I count my designing as play, not work! Writing, editing, photographing and publishing patterns is definitely (hard) work, but the design and crocheting part is exactly what I&#8217;d be doing even if it didn&#8217;t pay &#8211; I love this part \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<h2>2013 Designs CAL<\/h2>\n<p>The January CAL includes all 18 of the crochet patterns I released last year &#8211; a nice mix of free and paid, amigurumi and accessories, and (hopefully!) something to appeal to everyone:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/2013roundup.jpg\" alt=\"2013 PlanetJune crochet patterns\" \/><\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;d like to join in, you&#8217;ll find the CAL thread in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ravelry.com\/groups\/planetjune-crochet-designs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>PlanetJune ravelry group<\/strong><\/a> &#8211; I hope to see you there \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<h2>Review and Win contest<\/h2>\n<p>I apparently completely forgot to do the monthly update in December (I can&#8217;t imagine why&#8230;), so I have 2 &#8216;Review and Win&#8217; winners to announce today! <\/p>\n<p>November&#8217;s winner is <strong>Aimee N<\/strong>, with her review of my <a href=\"\/shop\/index.php?main_page=product_info&#038;products_id=251\">Cascading Clusters Shawl<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/shop\/index.php?main_page=product_info&#038;cPath=30&#038;products_id=251\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/pjac_cascadingclustersshawl.jpg\" alt=\"Cascading Clusters Shawl crochet pattern by June Gilbank\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I bought this pattern as soon as I saw it and put another shawl aside so that I could work on it. I like to work from charts, and the chart for this pattern was very clear and easy to follow. It&#8217;s a quick project too. I used an alpaca sport-weight yarn which drapes beautifully. I am so pleased with this shawl that I will probably make it again &#8212; and I rarely make the same pattern more than once!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And December&#8217;s winner is <strong>Jeanne S<\/strong>, with her review of my <a href=\"\/shop\/index.php?main_page=product_info&#038;products_id=98\">Christmas Trees<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/shop\/index.php?main_page=product_info&#038;products_id=98\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/xmastree3.jpg\" alt=\"crocheted Christmas trees by planetjune\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Another great pattern from June. Very easy to follow directions, and the tiny star is adorable! I used white worsted weight yarn, red heart shimmer, worked really well. Then I had some finer weight pale blue glittery yarn. Made the small tree again. Stands on its own without being stuffed, and very quick to make up. Thanks again<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Congrats to both of the winners &#8211; I&#8217;ll email you to find out which pattern you&#8217;d like as your prize \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>And now I&#8217;m heading back to a lazy afternoon of watching TV and crafting. My 2014 is going pretty well so far &#8211; I hope yours is too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m still technically on holiday for another week, but in this age of smartphones and wifi it&#8217;s hard to ever take a complete break &#8211; there are always more questions to answer and people to help! I&#8217;m trying to keep work to a minimum, though, and enjoying some relaxing crafting time. My Craft WIPs It&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}