Crafty New Year!

I finished my Christmas presents! A scarf, a belt, a wine bottle cozy, a coffee cup cozy! and that brings us to this post. MY FIRST PATTERN! 

Here is what I started with:

 Two skeins of Lily Sugar and Cream yarn, the mug you want to cover, a crochet hook, scissors, measuring tape, and a 1 1/2 inch button. (I crocheted mine, that's where that second skein comes in.)

Step one is to measure around your mug, from one side of the handle to the other (ALL the way around.) Mine came out 9 1/2 inches. Then, you make a chain that is that length. Mine was 35 chains. To keep this simple, you are just going to double crochet the first two row. Here is what mine looked like after the first row:

And the second row:

The third row gets a bit tricky. When you usually chain 3 to get your next row of double crochet, this time you will make a super long chain. To do this, I wrapped my unfinished piece around the mug and measured the space underneath the handle and figured out how long the hole needed to be to reach where the button will sit. It came out to about 2 1/2 inches, so I chained a 5 inch chain.  After the chain, instead of crocheting into the second stitch, I crocheted into the first. It looks something like this: (I'm making these big so you can really see them.)

After that it is really simple, you just continue double crocheting until you have 5 total rows. Attach the button at the point that you measured.  

You can totally customize this also, I added 2 rows of sc to the bottom to make it more sleeve-like. You can add a border, change colors in the rows, use a different stitch, buy a pre-made button... the possibilities are endless. If you do use my pattern, I'd like some feedback. Let me know what you changed, how you liked it, etc...

Happy Crafting!