Amigurumi Animals: 15 Patterns and Dozens of Techniques for Creating Cute Crochet Creatures

I'm new to crochet and have been disappointed with other amigurumi pattern books. The instructions in this book are terrific! Annie gives two different patterns to follow (USA/UK and Japanese) and for a beginner like me (and a visual artist) it helped the instructions make a lot more sense! I also like that the author offers methods for designing/creating original amigurumi's -- and doesn't want the reader to follow a formal or strict pattern to get from Point A to Point B. It seems to me that the author wants people who read her book to be as creative and original as possible -- and that was an essential element I found lacking in other amigurumi books!

I hesitated about ordering after reading the previous review. She was exactly right in her opinion. The toys look pretty simple and almost ugly and the yarns are very heavy compared to the other books I own on this topic. But the information on designing your own is not available elsewhere and makes the book worthwhile as does the gallery of other peoples' toys available online. Instructions are given in words and in charts using x's as in the Japanese books. Not a first purchase for this topic.

"Amigurumi Animals" (titled "Crochet Animals" in the Australian edition and "Amigurumi" in the UK edition) is an excellent book for beginners with no experience in crochet. In this book, Annie Obaachan (who helped Rachel Matthews with her books "Knitorama" and "Hookorama"), provides patterns for making 15 simple Japanese-style crochet animals. Each animal is made out of simple shapes, such as spheres, eggs and sausages, which are among the simplest things to crochet, and instructions are given as both charts and in words. No prior knowledge of crochet is assumed and illustrated instructions are given of all crochet techniques. If I was teaching a child or young adult how to crochet, this would be the book that I would choose. For more experienced crocheters, it is likely that the patterns in this book will prove to be overly simplistic. I consider myself to be an intermediate crocheter, and I felt that the patterns in this book weren't challenging enough and seemed to be a bit amateurish, too. However, for people such as myself, this book is not a complete waste of money. From my point of view, the best part about this book was a chapter on designing your own Japanese-style/amigurumi animals. This chapter is the sort of thing that I have been looking for for a long time. In the past, when I have wanted to design my own toys, I have taken existing patterns and made attempts (with varying levels of success) to adapt them to my needs. This book removes that necessity. It provides tips on the initial design process; instructions for making the components of the toys to your own measurements (that is, sausages, eggs, spheres etc); and advice on giving your animals facial expression. I also found the gallery of photographs of amigurumi animals, provided at the end of this book, to be inspiring.