Somewhat Froggy

This is my first attempt at amigurumi, so with that in mind, it's not so bad. Still… I don't really know why the body came out so plumply rotund!

My mother just loves frogs; There's a massive frog collection in our living room that takes up the enter side table top. I really don't know when it all began, but she's been searching high and low for interesting frogs – carved from wood or stone, blown from glass, molded from plastic, anything – for years. I've helped her quest in the past with a knit frog, but now she's got it all; A crocheted frog.

I used the pattern in a thin little book I bought while doing a day-trip to New York, called the Amigurumi Collection 4. I was so excited that my Japanese has improved enough to read some of the text, and my crochet has improved enough that I can read the diagrams! Now I'm just itching to get my hands on the other volumes in print… Sadly, they are ridiculously expensive in the US. Printed right on the back of the cover reads a label pricing it at 1200 yen. This bookstore, however, thought that a price closer to $18 would be more appropriate, for some torturous reason. It's no better online, either. You may end up paying around $25 per book, and then you still need to add in shipping and handling fees. There's just no winning!

A handful of classmates will be leaving for Japan within two weeks now… I would have been one of them, but my health isn't yet stable enough. I've got to quickly find some way to bribe these kids to bring me back every amigurumi book they can find.