Magic Ring. Here's Something New to Me

I am by no means an expert knitter and I'm an even less accomplished crocheter.  So when I stumble across something that either makes my hobby more enjoyable and/or makes my projects look that much better, I just have to share.

I was recently put in a position where I had to produce an infant baby hat by the next day.  Of course, the first place I go is Ravelry to do an advanced search for what would be the best pattern for me.  The very first pattern listed was called 30 Minute Baby Hat by Mary Ann Colatuno.  Even the name was perfect.  I immediately cast on and, with the exception of the flower part, was done within 30 minutes.  Now, back to my original thought.

In her directions was a link to a crochetme.com forum post that quickly described this wonderful thing called Magic Ring.  I would give you the link but she has since turned the directions into a pdf and I can't find the post anywhere.  So, today when I wanted to hook a circular project I went looking for it to refresh my memory and since I couldn't click to forum post (typing it in the address bar didn't work either) I searched on YouTube and found it.  I just clicked on the first one listed (you can see it here) and with one simple change, my finished work looks so much neater and was that much easier.

Here's a photo of the finished project.

Photo courtesy of my friend

Sylvia Schultz of

Sylvia Schutz Photography

Just Another Day in Paradise

Someone pour me a strong one! Nothing major. Just another crazy day. Get Bit around for school, walk the dog, convince the bug guy to come to our place first because I forgot he was supposed to be there today, rush home from said dog walk, clear off enough floor space from returning from out trip right into a work week for him to spray, get said child to school, go open my store (do as much as I can before my mom relieves me), pick up Bit from school, get her some lunch, frantically look for her ballet stuff she hasn’t needed in two weeks, chauffeur her to ballet, find out I’m behind on all kinds of important mommy stuff, knit for 15 minutes and suddenly she’s out, get her home to a cold/rainy day and spend the next 4 1/2 hours reading, pretending, doing laundry, listening to “Mommy, look at this!” a billion times, not getting any knitting done on my mom’s 70th birthday present and no wine until 6:30. 


Tomorrow should be easier, I just work.

If Not Knitting...

then spend hours on Ravelry organizing.

Since it's a slow day at work and I can't organize my stash from here, I decided to clean up my Ravelry stash and queue.  I'm the type of person that needs a list, a plan, an organized way of tackling a problem or situation.  Of course, that only applies to my online life.  In real life, I'm unorganized, running in circles and constantly trying to keep too many balls in the air.  So while I'm trapped here at work, I figured I'd do my best to get some control over one of the few things I have control over, my knitting.

First up, move the items in my queue that actually have a chance of getting made to the top of the list and create tabs so I can easily find them.  Secondly, link said projects to yarn I currently have listed on my stash page.  This part is a little dicey since most of the yarn I intend to ever use isn't on there but I figure I will go back and refine this part at some point in the far far away future.  Finally, I organized my projects page, so I can look at my final efforts and reaffirm that it is always worth it in the end.  I even created a "me" tab so I could quickly see some of what I've kept for myself.

Better get back to it, only 6 more hours of work left.