Read Hooked for Life for Free Online Page A

don’t know what you want it to be when you begin. You can combine any sort of stitch and yarn and texture and go to town until you get bored with it, then instantly move onto something else. You’ll know when it’s finished; it will tell you. Then you make another and another, and eventually, out of the pile ofdisparate bits and bobs rises a finished piece. It could be anything from a wall hanging to a garment, and it will be completely unique—a piece of crochet art that no one in the world besides you could have made.
    Crocheters talk a lot about whether they are process driven (“Just give me a hook and some yarn so I can crochet and I don’t much care what comes out the other side”) or result driven (they have a strong idea what they are going to make in what size with what yarn and they are going to make exactly what they envision). Free-form crochet is for people who really enjoy the process of crochet. Not that you can’t get fantastic results—you really can make some striking pieces that are a delight to wear or display. But relaxing a bit on the planning side of crochet is likely to bring you the most creative results, if that makes any sense. If you let yourself be driven by the yarn and the hook and what they are telling you, you can do a little planning later on when you have a clearer idea of where you are headed. The process crocheter doesn’t mind taking a few detours along the way since it’s the journey that matters, and may even change the destination entirely if there is a pretty pathway leading her away from her original goal.
    Of course, if you are shaking your head and looking askance at the idea of yarn and hooks speaking to you, perhaps free form is not your game. Some crocheters need the reassurance of a pattern—a road map, if you will, to get them where they are going.
    Which isn’t to say there is no planning in free form. If you want to wind up with something wearable in approximately your size, you need to do the math about how you want each garment piece to be shaped and measured, as compared to how large and what shape the pieces coming off of your hook actually are. Some free-formers work with paper or fabric templates—they mark out the shape of the pattern piece they need and arrange and rearrange the scrumbles until they have a layoutthat is both pleasing to the eye and the correct shape. Some “build” their pieces on a mannequin to get the flow and drape just right. The fantastic news about free form is—it is never ever wrong. It is only what you want, when you want it, if you wind up with a little section that needs to be filled in, all you need to do is whip out your hook and yarn and crochet a piece that fits.
    Free form is like making a jigsaw puzzle at the same time that you are putting it together. At least you don’t need to force any pieces to fit in! And it’s an excellent excuse not just to build up stash (“Hey, I’ll use that skein in something somewhere because it looks so nice next to some of my other skeins”) but to use it up. Because one of the things a yarn can tell you is when it is gone—no pesky leftovers to put back in the box, just set yourself a challenge to use up this sparkly bit until there is no more.
    It also doesn’t matter what type of gauge you like to work in; you can turn your favorite techniques into free form. I have seen some gorgeous free-form garments in thread that look like their cousins in Irish crochet, and some wild and wooly outerwear that will stop traffic (in a good way!), and just about everything in between.
    If you can take the plunge, free form can be the ultimate crochet adventure. And you never have to leave your chair.

Amigurumi
    A
migurumi
means “Beanie Baby” in Japanese. Okay, in fact it doesn’t, although it is a Japanese word. It refers to small stuffed knitted or crocheted (but mostly crocheted, yay!) animals, or anthropomorphized inanimate objects.
    Some cool, trendy crocheter who is way younger