Don’t miss the Ravellenic Games discount on this pattern until Aug 11 – keep reading for details! It feels like forever since I designed a new amigurumi mammal – my latest designs have all been plants, birds, and reptiles – so I had to get back to my PlanetJune roots and make a new cute and realistic amigurumi animal for you. And here’s the result: my Raccoon crochet pattern! Raccoon Fun Facts Raccoons are naturally found throughout North America, but they’ve also been introduced into Europe and Japan. They are named for their dexterous hands, from the Algonquian word aroughcun. At night, th ..read more

Over the past couple of years, I’ve fallen out of the blogging habit. After my seclusion while writing The Essential Guide to Amigurumi, I found it difficult to get back into the comfortable swing of sharing things online. I’ve been putting way too much pressure on myself to make things perfect, and trying to figure out what it means to be ‘professional’ without losing myself and what’s important to me. Posting online used to be easy, but then my anxious brain got in the way with thoughts that I may be old and irrelevant in today’s fast-paced and noisy social media landscape. Then I remembered ..read more

It’s time for a new classic PlanetJune potted plant pattern! Perfect for the summer season – or adding the feel of summer at any time of year – my realistic Strawberry Plant crochet pattern makes a lovely ornamental piece, with its distinctive leaves, delicate white flowers and plump bright red berries. Don’t you just want to reach out and pick one of these juicy strawberries?! About the Design For this strawberry plant, I was looking to create a simplified design with just the right amount of realism in a compact, well-balanced arrangement. The pot has a stylish textured band, and a new styl ..read more

For the past few months, I’ve been working on a behind-the-scenes project to update the PlanetJune online store to improve your experience and to streamline future updates. This was a massive project: I first built the shop in 2009, and the software and plugins I use have been upgraded multiple times since then, leaving me with thousands of messy files of patched and re-patched code. I decided that the only way to clean things up was to start again from scratch, so I’ve rebuilt the entire shop using the latest codebase, and incorporated all the hundreds of customizations I’ve coded and built i ..read more

Today’s PlanetJune Story comes from Susan McCarthy from Norfolk MA. I always love to see people using my potted plant crochet patterns in new and creative ways, and Susan’s fabulous multi-tier succulent display definitely fits that bill! I’ll let Susan explain: I belong to the Garden Club of Norfolk (Massachusetts) and each month someone signs up to do a display for our town’s library. I decided to crochet a succulent display for the month of June. And for a week in June 2023, the Garden Club and Library cohosted Books in Bloom, where a dozen designers from the Club made floral displays inspir ..read more

After finishing my Duck and Goose pattern, I couldn’t resist a little seasonally-appropriate addition to the families, so here’s my new pattern: Ducklings and Goslings! About the Pattern My goal for this design was the simplicity of a rubber ducky combined with the realistic shape and markings of real baby ducks and geese. As a result, the assembly is super-simple – you only need to stitch the bill to the head, and the head to the body, and your adorable palm-sized baby bird is finished! This pattern includes three mix-and-match options. By swapping the duckling and gosling bill shapes and ..read more

If there are other crochet techniques you’d like me to cover in future videos, please leave a comment below, or email me (june@planetjune.com) with your suggestions! If you’ve ever struggled to find the perfect eyes for your smaller amigurumi, you’ll love my technique for making tiny yarn eyes. In my latest video, I’ll show you my foolproof method for making a pair of perfectly matched tiny child-safe yarn eyes with a lifelike sparkle. This technique is an embroidery-free foolproof method for making tiny yarn eyes, spots and dots for amigurumi. It works especially well for amigurumi that are ..read more

I’m so excited to have a new design to share with you today! I was a little worried that my amigurumi design mojo would be gone forever after pouring everything I had into The Essential Guide to Amigurumi, but, after a little time off after Christmas, it all came flooding back and I’m so happy to be able to present the first new PlanetJune pattern of 2024: Duck and Goose! Duck and Goose Fun Facts Ducks and geese are both members of the family Anatidae (together with swans). They have a similar appearance and features, including webbed feet for swimming and waterproof feathers. But look close ..read more

Throughout 2023, over 800 people from all over the world crocheted along with me to create vibrantly striped Temperature Snakes, with one round of the body crocheted per day in a colour that represented the day’s temperature wherever they live. We’ve waited and watched all year long as the snakes grew in length and became more and more colourful, and now they’re finally finished! Enter the Temperature Snake Gallery >> I’ve set up this CAL gallery to showcase and celebrate our year-long crochet journey. You can view all the snakes together, or click into each project to see more about th ..read more

The third annual PlanetJune Reindeer Games crochet-along has just wrapped up, and it was a huge success! (The Reindeer Games is a relaxed end-of-year CAL where you can participate by crocheting projects from any PlanetJune patterns or any of my books.) For 2023, I changed the way the CAL runs so it’s not limited to Ravelry any more. Over the 2 month CAL, we had 60 projects submitted through the PJ Ravelry group and an additional 50 projects from the PJ Discord group, making a total of 110 completed projects: Aren’t they great? All the projects, together with the CAL statistics, are on display ..read more