Review: The Big Book of Begginer Amigurumi

After watching several tutorials, reading a couple of books, and asking my niece for help, I’ve now learned to crochet amigurumi! The progress has been steady, and I am now even able to crochet with my left hand, as I have CTS on my right.

First: you have to master the magic ring. The tensile strength required is what was most difficult to learn. Once you learn to do a chain, a magic ring, and how to yarn over a single crochet and a double crochet, you can do anything.

Second: match your hook to the thickness of the yarn (all these tips are present in this book, so it is a great gateway to this fascinating world).

Third: Favor sewing on tiny details instead of trying to master no-sew tutorials; it will be easier to start that way.

The learning curve comes with a caveat: you have to learn to read the Morse-like stitch codes, something I found was a bit difficult. However, once you learn them, you only need to check the instructions in the book instead of pausing a video, which is always distracting.

The main good thing about this Big Beginner Book is the ease with which you can follow the instructions. All the projects are easy to follow and can be finished in an afternoon or two, which is a major source of motivation: a finished tiny plush thing made by you, that you can then take pictures of and give away… I am always on the lookout for pocket-sized crafts like those.

Red Ted Art, and Maggie Woodley, the artful woman behind it, are very well known. Hers is the go-to site for easy kids’ crafts. Her clear and helpful videos, wild imagination, and vast array of projects range from everything: paint, ceramics, fiber arts, origami, collage, and much more. They are all meant to be made with kids, even preschoolers.

Her daughter, Pippa Woodley, started as a young girl helping her mum, and now they have both crafted this book, a mother-daughter project:

The Big Book of Beginner Amigurumi: 60 Easy Projects for Charming Crochet Creations by Maggy Woodley (Author), Pippa Woodley (Author)

The sixty projects of this book follow different themes and are meant to be followed in a progression.

Each one has a different stitch, from simple ones to more complex ones (Bobble stitch, I’m looking at you). The projects are meant for both regular yarn and the plush yarn I am most fond of using.

The foundational techniques can also be found as Video Tutorials, which are very helpful. Basic stitches, little details, a crochet hook, and matching yarn are all you need to start, and safety eyes, polyfill, and lots of different types of yarn will feed an obsessive like me.

The themes vary from food items to seaside, farm animals, dolls, and accessories. As you learn how to crochet with regular yarn, you can then scale up any project with plush yarn for a bigger, plushier effect. The cherries depicted here are my attempt at following the instructions only from the book: