Alpaca Wacka: Sometimes I wish I could crochet!

Now, I'm a terrible crochetter- or "crotch-et-er" as we say 'round my house. As a little girl, I used to chain strings to make halters and bridles for my Breyer horses or when I really had my mojo working, I'd make saddles (squares with little straps attached for a girth) and stable blankets for my trusty steeds, but this was the extent of my abilities. Knitting anything larger meant I made a triangle-because I was forever dropping stitches at the end. I gave it all up in disgust once I'd grown out of playing on my knees and making little horsie noises. Puberty hit-and I was forced to face the facts that I was a rotten crotch-et-er.

Fast forward almost 20 years and patterns like these make me ALMOST itchy to pick up a hook... Amigurumi means "Knitted or Crocheted Toy" and man are they cute. What do you expect from the Japanese-who afterall, have perfected the art of Cute.

Wiki says "The simplest designs are worked in spirals. In contrast to typical Western crochet the rounds are not usually joined. They are also worked with a smaller size hook in proportion to the weight of the yarn in order to create a very tight-looking fabric without any gaps through which the stuffing might escape. Amigurumi are usually worked in sections and then joined, except for some amigurumi which have no limbs, only a head and torso which are worked as one piece. The extremities are often stuffed with plastic pellets to give them a life-like weight, while the rest of the body is stuffed with fiber stuffing.

The pervading aesthetic of amigurumi is cuteness. To this end, typical amigurumi animals have an over-sized spherical head on a cylindrical body with undersized extremities."