Mug Hugs

I have had Val Pierce's Knitted Mug Hugs for a few months, waiting for a reason to try out some of its patterns. One of my daughters recently moved into a new team environment in her work, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to use the book and make some celebratory mug hugs.

I began with a simple moss stitch one, decorated by a nifty little knitted bow and secured with a button shaped like a bow.



I then moved into simple cables. I like the effect of the colour contrast. There seemed to be an error in the pattern which suggests one cable cross-over every 10 rows, when the illustration clearly shows one every 5. My first one went with the pattern (lemon background), the others went with the illustration.

I did one with a double cable closed with a teapot button. I added a couple of extra teacup buttons to complement. On the whole, I avoided using buttons as decoration. One of the attractions of mug hugs is the pleasant feel; and buttons seem to me to get in the way of that.


Autumn leaves were fun to do. The colours here are not true - the grey is really brown. I like the effect of this one.

The jacquard one is very pleasing to do - but not, like most of the others for doing while watching TV.








I also enjoyed learning to make the flowers for these ones. I added a couple of tiny bird buttons on a couple of them.


One of my favourites is simply knitted in stocking stitch, using a nobbly wool-acryllic mix that gives differences in texture and shading.

The  pièce de résistance  is what is meant to be a cat. I decided it look more like a mouse and fiddled a bit with the ears. Now it looks like a startled and not-too-bright dog!


I think I am a bit mad, playing with these, but it has been quite a bit of fun.

Are mug hugs useful? I am not sure they will be around as long as tea cosies, but they are even faster to knit!