A "hobby horse" is the thing you can't stop talking about. Everybody on this ring has one. Some of us collect (ticket stubs, postcards, cartridges, sea glass). Some of us build and fix (a halfpipe, a pickup truck, a tiki bar, a pinball machine). Some of us grow, cook, play or ride. None of us do it for money, and all of us have built a home page about it because we could not help ourselves.

I started the Hobby Horse ring in March 1999 after joining the Front Porch ring over at the Henderson Family Home Page and thinking, there ought to be one of these for the folks with a garage full of projects. The ring is a loop: every member site carries a little box at the bottom with Prev and Next links, so you can start anywhere and, fifteen clicks later, end up where you began. Or come here and pick.

The ring is about the hobbies, not about selling anything. Personal pages only; a business with a hobby page is welcome to ask, but the page has to be the hobby.

Start at the top and follow the Next links around, or jump in anywhere. The last site's Next goes back to the first.

After #15 the ring goes back around to #1. If a Next link on any page seems broken, the owner may be between updates; come back here and skip ahead, then let me know.

If you have a home page about something you collect, build, restore, grow, cook, play or ride, and you do it for love and not for money, you belong here. Here's how it works:

1. Send me an e-mail at [email protected] with your name, the address of your page, its title, and one line about what it's about (that line goes in the table above).
2. I'll visit your page. I'm looking for a real page with real content about your hobby. It doesn't need to be fancy (look at mine). It does need to be yours, and it does need to be finished enough to read. Pages that are one paragraph and an "under construction" sign can join once there's more.
3. I'll write back with your Prev and Next neighbors. New members go in at the end of the ring, just before this page comes around again, so the order stays sensible for everyone already on it.
4. Put the ring box on your page, near the bottom, with the ring button (it's at /images/buttons/webring.gif, 88 by 31) and links to your Prev, this hub, and your Next. Copy the box exactly as it appears at the bottom of this page and change the name and links. Please keep it as is; the whole point is that visitors recognize it from site to site.
5. Once I see the box on your page, I add you to the table above and tell your two neighbors to update their links. That usually takes a week; I do this at the kitchen table on Sunday nights.

Rules of the ring, such as they are: keep your ring box up to date; if you move your page, tell me; if you take your page down, tell me so I can close the gap; and nothing on your page that you wouldn't show my grandchildren. That's all. There are no dues, no meetings and no minutes, which makes it the easiest club I've ever belonged to.