As my crochet has progressed I’ve often seen patterns refer to making a magic ring. This mysterious technique allows you to make a small crochet circle with a closed up centre. It looks very neat for many types of crochet projects but is a must  in amigurumi techniques that are used in crochet toy making. I think it would be better to use this technique for starting off the zapper in my pattern for Iron Man fingerless mittens. In fact, I may use it to start all new crochet projects from now on. Many blog sites, websites and You Tube videos offer tutorials on how to make a magic ring but the best that I’ve found are provided by June Gilbank at her site www.planetjune.com.

June presents many patterns and tutorials, many of the focusing on things made using amigurumi.

Tutorials on making a magic circle: Planet June

June has two very clear photo tutorials, one for people who crochet right-handed and one for left-handers:

• Magic Ring for right-handers (photo tutorial)
• Magic Ring for left-handers (photo tutorial)

June’s video tutorials

June has also produced two excellent video tutorials, which I have embedded below. These have been produced by June Gilbank and are copywright to www.planetjune.com but freely available on her YouTube channel, with many of her other video tutorials.    

Making a magic circle for right-handed crocheters

In the video that you can access below, June shows the magic ring method for people who crochet right-handed:

Making a magic circle for left-handed crocheters

This video tutorial from June shows how to make a magic ring if you are left-handed:

An alternative from Craftsy

I’ve added in a new link to this tutorial as I came across an excellent photo tutorial on Craftsy by Andrea Sanchez:

• Demystifying the magic ring

These tutorials are so clear and so useful I can highly recommend them. Before I saw them I struggled with the whole concept of a magic circle but no longer…