Sentence:  Some days after April's First Friday festivities, I noticed on the desk of a colleague an adorable crocheted fish doll, one Fred by name. ... Fred, like many of [Mary] Nguyen's pieces, is an <WSD>amigurumi</WSD> – petite knitted/crocheted stuffed animals, popularized in Japan over the course of the 20th century before websites like Etsy, Pinterest and Ravelry exposed Western audiences to them in the mid-2000s. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  Such a stuffed toy crocheted or knitted from yarn.