In this post, we’ll cover how to make a magic circle. If you prefer a video tutorial, you can find that here, and if you’re left handed you can find that tutorial here.
Magic circles are most often used in amigurumi because they eliminate the gap at the center of the starting circle, but they can also be used for anything worked in the round where you want to mitigate gapping.
Making the Magic Circle
There are a few different ways to start your magic circle, but I prefer wrapping the yarn around my fingers since it helps to keep the yarn strands in place.
Start by placing the yarn tail over the palm of your left hand.
Now, wrap the yarn around the back of your hand and under your index and middle finger.
Cross the yarn over, angling it towards your wrist. Catch this yarn under your index and ring fingers again.
The yarn strands should be parallel on the back of your hand.
Now, using your hook, go under the strand closest to your fingertips, and over the strand closest to your wrist.
Grab this second strand, and pull it under the first.
Turning the mouth of your hook towards you, twist this strand around your hook so it loops on itself.
You’re now going to grab and chain one with your working yarn. This strand is indicated on the image above- it’s the part of the second strand towards the top of your hand.
Using your hook, go under this working yarn to grab it, and pull it through the twisted loop on your hook.
That chain one secures our magic loop, and we can now take it off our fingers.
Working into the Magic Circle
We’ll use single crochet in this example. You’ll already have a chain one from making the circle, so we don’t have to chain more to get to stitch height.
Start by opening the circle with your fingers. You’re going to be working both into the loop and around the yarn tail. Working around the yarn tail is what lets us close the loop at the end.
Again, you’re working into the loop and around the yarn tail, so make sure your hook goes under both of these strands.
You can now work your single crochets around these two strands.
If you’re working other stitches into the magic circle, just make sure you chain the correct number, keeping in mind that we already have a chain one to start. If you’re working double crochets in the magic circle, you’re going to want to chain two more to get up to a turning chain of 3 before working into the magic circle.
If your yarn tail is starting to get too short to work around, just pull on it a little bit. This will lengthen the tail, but also begin to close the loop, so don’t pull on it too much.
Closing the magic circle
Once you’ve worked the number of stitches you need into the magic circle, grab the yarn tail, and pull it tight.
And that’s it!
As you can see above, there’s no gap in the center of this round of stitches.
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