Make Your Own Crochet Animals: Create Your Own Unique Animals and Patterns

Crafter Knapek debuts with a colorful guide to crocheting amigurumi, or small yarn animals. The patterns and projects include tiny ornaments, key chain accessories, and toys resembling such animals as foxes, raccoons, whales, and hippos. Knapek walks readers through the basics, with photographs demonstrating how to execute single, half-double, double, and triple crochets. Most of the projects rely on single crochet, such as the cute yellow octopus with tentacles that look “like a skirt,” or the slightly more advanced magic circle technique used to create the rotund body and head of a hippo. The author encourages readers to customize the projects, noting that the hippo design could be modified to become a pig, and details how to make accessories for the animals, including various hats and a handlebar mustache. The animals are cartoonish and adorable, though the variety of stitches used in the designs means there may be a bit of a learning curve for beginners. Intermediate crocheters will get a kick out of these charming creatures. (Oct.)