Monday Morning Mug Rugs!

Over the weekend I put aside my Atta Girl Sweater knitting and picked up smaller needles to knit a few mug rugs.  I had (on Friday-Valentine's Day) seen a pattern called Pair of Hearts for mug rugs.  Hearts, flowers, and butterflies always suck me in!  We have a ton of heart shaped cooking pans.  Love them.  Including a heart-shaped cast iron Lodge skillet.  I love that pan even though it did not work the way I thought it would.  I will have to make several more things in the pan to see if I can make them work.  Actually, I have only tried making pancakes in that heart cast iron pan.  How did I imagine I was going to flip that pancake? It did not work...

Anyway, in the spirit of using up all yarn in the house this year, I made a dozen heart-y mug rugs!  I love how they look.  Here is the big picture:

The first one, in the upper left corner, was made using US 8 needles.  It was too floppy for me so I dropped down to US 5 needles. I like them a lot better. I would have used the US 6 needles but they are all in other projects (another plan for this year is to finish ALL projects that are on the needles!) so they were not available for this project.

These mug rugs are knitted using the mosaic technique.  This is a very easy way to do color work.  For garter stitch mosaic knitting you will need to knit over and back in one color only.  For this pattern you knit the background color then slip the contrast color stitches as you get to them WYIB (With Yarn In Back).  On the way back across you slip the contrast color stitches WYIF (With Yarn In Front).  On the second color row you will be knitting the contrast color stitches and slipping the background color WYIB, then on the way back slip the background color WYIF, and on and on until bind off.  The designer of this pattern uses the Chinese Waitress Cast On which I did not notice until I had actually finished the last of these dozen mug rugs. Oh well.  Maybe I will try it next time.

Here is an up-close (more or less)  mug rug:

As you can see-I did not actually lay the mug rug flat to photograph...I just laid it over the arm of the chair which is why is looks somewhat wonky. It really is rather nice.  At least I like it.  I will be giving these away today.  This makes me happy.  I love to share pretty stuff.

This one I chose to add to the post because it clearly shows that I am using up yarn!  I finished the white yarn then started in with yellow.  Yay!  One ball down, many to go!  

Mosaic knitting is:  So easy. So fun.  So colorful.  It just takes time

While knitting these mug rugs I was watching YouTube, as usual. There were some great spinning videos plus I watched a few Knicoleknits Knows Knitting videos.  One was on marling.  You will see that here in the future, at least you will see my efforts at marling!  When we were on our mission lots of yarn was given to me.  Eventually there was too much so I started a marled blanket project.  It was very fun to do.  

The yarn organization project is in full steam ahead condition currently.  I bought some hair clippy things to attach yarn ends to balls so there will be no more tangled messes.  To give you an idea of the magnitude of the "problem"--I have purchased four cards with 14 hair clips on each card.  Today I need to purchase more hair clip cards...!  Not quite finished with the ones I have but don't want to run out.  When I am on a roll, stopping is not a happy option...