In the meantime, as promised, here are some screenshots of pertinent pages of the pattern, for your preview (and preparation) pleasure.
First, the introduction section containing information on equipment and skills and material that you need to tackle the projects.
Next are the index/contents pages, so you know what you'll be getting, and how it's all organized, and why it isn't just "a bundle of seventeen individual animal patterns". Remember, this is designed like a softie primer, meaning the main aim is not just to provide you with templates for making x number of identically-shaped animals but to teach you how to design standard animal features (limbs, tails, ears, etc.) that you can use for other softies in your life, not just the ones of Menagerie.
So, summary:
1 Menagerie is a 92-page pattern, including the cover page. Of these,
- 14 are template pages,
- 22 are text-and-color-photo pages of foundational instructions that teach you about making softies and softie parts in general, and
- 48 are text-and-color-photo pages of instructions for specific animals
- 4 are diagram pages for assembling, adapting and varying the templates.
2 The Squid is included. The Fish is partly included. This means that there are instructions for adapting the base template to make the Fish templates, and there are instructions for making the fish lips, but there are NO actual fish templates for fish fins and fish eyes and so on.
3 You will need a program for reading pdf documents as well as a printer for printing out templates. You also need to know how to set your printer to print things at 100%. This means that if your printer has the bad habit of choosing its favorite scale (they call it "print to fit") as its auto-setting, you need to know how to override that and force it to obey you and give you what YOU want. This is easier than it sounds - all printer settings have this function, and it's usually as simple as clicking one of the options in a menu on your computer screen, but not all of us know where to find that and don't realize that printers can sometimes be sneaky behind our backs and try to get away with murder unless you show them who's boss.
How do you know if your printer is evil? Answer: if you know exactly what I'm talking about in this paragraph, you're in control. If you're like, "What? There are different sizes? I thought I just hit 'print' and the printer does everything," you probably need to ask someone for help.