Crochet Buffet by Naomi Fox: A Review

Why this book caught my eye

A taco that is also a stegosaurus. A pug that is also a baked potato. A shark wearing a charcuterie board. Naomi Fox, the designer behind Crouton’s Crochet, has built an entire business on food-animal mashups, and this book is the menu.

I’ll be honest. My first thought was that a book of amigurumi puns had no business in a STEM issue.

Then I started reading the rounds. Every one of these plushies is a circle, a sphere, a cone, or a triangle, built stitch by stitch from simple rules. That is geometry, and it is the reason this book is in Tech Threads.

What’s inside

Three chapters, arranged like a day of eating.

The front matter covers supplies, four special stitches (bobble, mini bobble, invisible decrease, back post single crochet), and a short tips section. Every pattern pairs super bulky chenille with a hook well below the yarn’s recommended size, for a tight fabric that keeps the stuffing in.

Fox states plainly that the book is not meant for absolute beginners, and only the special stitches get written tutorials. Everything else, she says, you can learn on YouTube, the way she did.

The geometry hiding in the menu

Strip away the cheese and the googly eyes and this book is a working course in how flat stitches become three-dimensional shapes.

Here is the thing that made me sit up. Strip away the cheese and the googly eyes and this book is a working course in how flat stitches become three-dimensional shapes. Fox never frames it that way. The math is there anyway.

The flat circle

The Tacosaurus shell starts life as a flat circle. Every crocheter learns the rule for keeping a circle flat, usually without being told why it works.

A circle’s circumference grows by about 6.28 (that’s 2π) for every unit its radius grows. A round of single crochet is roughly one stitch tall, so each new round needs about six more stitches than the last. Add more and the circle ruffles. Add fewer and it cups into a bowl.

There’s a second trick worth knowing. If the increases sit in the same spot round after round, they stack into visible lines and the circle turns into a hexagon. Shift where they fall from one round to the next and it stays round. Good amigurumi patterns do this quietly, and this book is no exception.

The fold: circle meets straight edge

Here’s the clever part. The shell is joined to a flat, straight-edged filling. When a curved edge is attached to a straight edge of the same length, the curve has nowhere to go but to bend. The taco shape forms on its own. No stuffing tricks, no extra shaping, just geometry doing the work.

The sphere

Grow a circle, work straight rounds to build height, then decrease at the same rate you increased. That’s a sphere, and it’s the backbone of amigurumi. Most of the heads in this book start from that idea and get their personality from where the eyes, ears, and snouts go.

The cone

Increase much more slowly, a stitch or so per round instead of six, and the circle never gets the chance to flatten out. It stretches into a taper instead. That’s how a dinosaur tail, a horn, or an ice cream cone gets its shape.

The triangle

The BLT-Rex’s bread slices are triangles worked back and forth in rows, growing a little with each one. Corners in crochet come from packing extra stitches into a single spot so the edge can turn. That one idea is how every crocheted square and triangle keeps its points.

None of this is explained in mathematical terms, and it doesn’t need to be. But once you see it, you can’t unsee it, and with these five shapes you could design your own mashup.

Standout techniques and tips

Stitch counts on every round. Every round ends with its count in brackets. With chenille, that is not a nicety, it is how you survive (more on that below).

Skill ratings that count the sewing. Fox rates on a 1 to 5 scale and explains that a pattern with only basic stitches can still rate higher if it involves heavy sewing or judgment calls. That is the honest way to rate amigurumi, where assembly is often harder than the crochet.

Candid intros. The Shark-Cuterie Board intro warns you about the sewing up front. The Tacosaurus intro tells you it’s still not low-sew. You know what you’re signing up for before you buy yarn.

A sewing tip worth stealing. Chenille sheds when you sew with it, so Fox suggests assembling with worsted yarn in a matching color instead. It is cleaner and far less frustrating.

Permission to sell what you make. You can sell finished pieces as long as you credit her patterns. Market makers will appreciate having that spelled out.

Do the visuals hold up?

Photography is by Naomi Fox and Kevin Fox, and it suits the book. Each finished piece gets a clean full-page shot on a plain backdrop, and the patterns carry small process photos (finished legs, eye placement, the shell partway through) right beside the rounds they illustrate.

The special stitch tutorials are step-by-step photos with contrasting stitch markers showing exactly where the hook goes. The back post single crochet tutorial in particular is clear, and Fox admits she learned that stitch herself while writing the book.

The design is bright, bold, and fun without getting in the way of the instructions.

What could be better