Magical Bloopers

Everyone puts their best foot forward on social media, even though everyone knows we all have our own messes behind the camera. Since this blog is about fiber adventures, and adventures almost never go according to plan, I wanted to show you guys the winding road of mess that got me to the Magic Mug Rug.

It started like a lot of designs do: I was listening to the Broadway Aladdin soundtrack over a lunch break and just started doodling. I didn’t have a finished object in mind, but when I was done, it screamed mug rug at me. When I thought about how to do the colorwork, tapestry crochet was the first idea I had, and I ran with it. Did I gauge? Did I bother to check a ratio for crochet stitches? I sure didn’t. I grabbed some yarn and started crocheting away without a care in the whole new world.

Did anyone watch the how-to video and notice that the chart was different than the one I posted? That was my original doodle. At the time of shooting, I thought it was going to work out perfectly. Then I reached the halfway point, I started to realize the mistake I made. Oh well, I thought, two mugs could fit on this. Someone could be really cute and put an Aladdin mug and a Jasmine mug on it together. By the time I was done, you could fit three mugs on this “coaster.”

So I had a good laugh, used it as the gauge I should’ve done in the beginning, and went back to the chart. I sized it down, of course, but mug rug v1.0 showed me something else. I tried to stay true to the original art, which meant a lot of curvy lines. I saw that groups of stitches were more defined in tapestry crochet, so I updated the design in that way as well. All of that got me v2.0, which I really love and am so happy to share with all of you.

Since I can’t let anything die, I did try to salvage my original chart by using it to cross-stitch on Tunisian crochet. I thought that would be a fun alternative where you didn’t have to juggle all four yarns at once. After I crocheted the borders, I ended up with different amounts of stitches on either side… so that’s it for now. A day may come when I can give you guys v1.1, but it is not this day.

Have you ever had a project that took a few tries? Did you scrap it and start over or was it a total loss? Leave me a comment, I’d love to hear about it!