{"id":14427,"date":"2015-02-03T08:18:03","date_gmt":"2015-02-03T13:18:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/?p=14427"},"modified":"2022-04-22T12:52:46","modified_gmt":"2022-04-22T16:52:46","slug":"february-update-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/february-update-4\/","title":{"rendered":"February update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wow, what an amazing month January has been: the response to my AmiCats far exceeded my expectations (although I <strong>had<\/strong> been secretly hoping that my 3 years of refining prototypes would end up paying off financially as well as artistically) and it&#8217;s so rewarding to finally see my patterns out in the world after all this time of working on them.<\/p>\n<h2>AmiCats CAL<\/h2>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ravelry.com\/discuss\/planetjune-crochet-designs\/3116712\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">AmiCats crochet-along<\/a> is in full swing! We&#8217;re only a couple of weeks into this CAL, and just look at the cute kitties:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/blog\/CAL_images\/CAL_AmiCats2015_wip.jpg\" alt=\"AmiCats CAL entries (crochet patterns by PlanetJune)\" width=\"500\" height=\"243\" \/><br \/>\n<em>We&#8217;ve already got AmiCats representing 4 continents of crocheters, so I&#8217;m hoping they&#8217;ll be popping up all around the world very soon&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The AmiCats CAL runs until the end of February, so if you&#8217;ve bought the patterns, please join us in the <a href=\"\/ravelry\">PlanetJune Ravelry group<\/a> and post photos of your ami kitties to the CAL so we can all enjoy them! (If you haven&#8217;t bought the patterns yet, you can find them all in the <a href=\"\/cats\">AmiCats section of my shop<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<h2>Love Hearts pattern<\/h2>\n<p>With Valentine&#8217;s Day fast approaching, I thought I&#8217;d remind you of my free heart pattern\u00a0for your seasonal decorations. <a href=\"\/hearts\">Love Hearts<\/a> includes perfectly-shaped flat hearts in 3 sizes, plus a puffy heart:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/hearts\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12984\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/lovehearts.jpg\" alt=\"love hearts crochet pattern by planetjune\" width=\"450\" height=\"313\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/images\/lovehearts.jpg 450w, https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/images\/lovehearts-150x104.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><br \/>\n<\/a><br \/>\n<strong><a href=\"\/hearts\">Love Hearts<\/a><\/strong> is a\u00a0donationware pattern, so you&#8217;re free to use it at no cost, and, if you&#8217;d like to leave me a donation of whatever you feel\u00a0it&#8217;s worth, you&#8217;ll also get a handy printable PDF version as a thank-you. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<h2>Hack Attack<\/h2>\n<p>My web server was subjected to a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Denial-of-service_attack\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">DDoS attack<\/a> over the past few days. It&#8217;s been very stressful &#8211; after the first wave of the attack was blocked, another popped up to take its place &#8211; and I apologise if you experienced any difficulties accessing PlanetJune (e.g. slowness, pages not loading correctly) in the past week. <\/p>\n<p>The attacks have all now been blocked (thanks to stellar tech support from my webhost, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.servint.net\/index.php?refid=DCD863926249\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ServInt<\/a>), and PlanetJune is running smoothly again. Phew!<\/p>\n<h2>Review and Win contest<\/h2>\n<p><em>You&#8217;re automatically entered in the next monthly draw every time you <a href=\"\/shop\/index.php?main_page=page&amp;id=16\">write a review<\/a> for a PlanetJune pattern you&#8217;ve enjoyed &#8211; and you&#8217;ll also be helping future customers make an informed decision about patterns they are considering buying.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I have two months of prizes to announces today, as I posted my <a href=\"\/blog\/2014-year-in-review\/\">2014 Year In Review<\/a> instead of a monthly update in January.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/shop\/index.php?main_page=product_info&amp;products_id=162\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"half\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/chinchilla1.jpg\" alt=\"chinchilla1\" width=\"43%\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"\/shop\/index.php?main_page=product_info&amp;products_id=235\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"half\" src=\"\/blog\/images\/iguana1.jpg\" alt=\"iguana1\" width=\"55%\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>December&#8217;s winner is <strong>Simone N<\/strong>&#8216;s review of my <a href=\"\/shop\/index.php?main_page=product_info&amp;products_id=162\">Chinchilla<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This great pattern provides you with easy-to-follow instructions for a super cute, realistic Chinchilla. Also the sewing part is very easy to understand, thereby guaranteeing an amigurumi you&#8217;ll immediately want to cuddle with!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And January&#8217;s winner is <strong>Alexa B<\/strong>&#8216;s review of my <a href=\"\/shop\/index.php?main_page=product_info&amp;products_id=235\">Iguana<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As you can see, this iguana is highly realistic and also surprisingly easy to make. I really liked the color changes here, you can barely see them, unlike with most patterns. Great technique!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Thank you for your reviews, and congratulations to both of you &#8211; I&#8217;ve emailed you both to find out which pattern you&#8217;d like as your prize!<\/p>\n<h2>What&#8217;s Next?<\/h2>\n<p>I&#8217;m happy to be making good progress with my latest <a href=\"\/commissions\">commissioned design<\/a>, so there&#8217;ll be a new PlanetJune Camel pattern coming very soon. I can&#8217;t wait to be able to show it to you &#8211; watch this space&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wow, what an amazing month January has been: the response to my AmiCats far exceeded my expectations (although I had been secretly hoping that my 3 years of refining prototypes would end up paying off financially as well as artistically) and it&#8217;s so rewarding to finally see my patterns out in the world after all [&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-14427","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\/14427","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=14427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.planetjune.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}