Crochet & amigurumi guides

Short, practical guides for reading, checking and designing amigurumi patterns. Every example pattern can be opened in the StitchCheck checker, so you can see the counts add up and the shape build in 3D.

• How to read an amigurumi pattern, line by lineWhat every part of a round means — the label, the stitches, the brackets and the number at the end — with a worked example you can open and check.6 min read
• US vs UK crochet terms: the conversion chart and how to tell them apartWhy a UK double crochet is a US single crochet, a full conversion table, and five quick ways to work out which terms a pattern uses.5 min read
• Why your stitch count is off — and how to find the mistakeThe eight most common reasons an amigurumi round ends with one stitch too many or too few, how to spot each one, and when it's safe to fudge it.7 min read
• Magic ring 6, 7 or 8? How the first round shapes your amigurumiHow the number of stitches in the first round changes how a piece grows, why circles turn into hexagons, and how staggered increases fix it.6 min read
• Increase and decrease maths for spheres, eggs, cones and tubesThe simple arithmetic behind amigurumi shapes: how many increases to make, how many plain rounds to work, and how to size a piece in centimetres.8 min read
• Crochet abbreviations in French, Spanish, German, Japanese and moreA side-by-side table of single crochet, increase, decrease, chain and magic ring in 12 languages, plus how chart symbols X, V and A work.6 min read
• Designing your own amigurumi from simple shapesHow to break a character into balls, eggs, cones and tubes, size each part, write the rounds and check them before you crochet a stitch.7 min read