Thursday, July 9, 2015

A Crochet Mandala Inspired By Wink


I crocheted my first ever mandala!!! And I have to say they are a lot of fun and turn out so beautiful. I love the way you can use color, cable stitches, overlapping techniques and/or more, in just a circle to create something so amazing. 


I have thought that mandalas were very pretty and I loved looking at mandalas that other crocheters had created, but I did not have the desire to make one. I've been obsessed with making amigurumi for over a year and until recently that's about all I wanted to make. Now I'm branching out and learning more. 

My Mom's birthday was coming up and I had one idea that I wanted to crochet for her. Legwarmers. But as I started designing the legwarmers I realized that unless I could get my youngest sister (who still lives at home because she is only 13) to measure my mom's legs, I had no way of knowing if they would fit. So I stopped crocheting the legwarmers and put my hook down for a couple of days to think. A couple of days later I found out that Marinke Slump aka Wink from A Creative Being had passed away. I was heartbroken by the news and when I saw that crocheters were crocheting her mandalas in her memory, I decided I wanted to create one for my mom using one of Wink's patterns. I chose the Spoke Mandala because I thought it looked really neat and I could imagine it with rainbow colors and mostly yellow to match my mom's living room and be a happy art piece. 

After finding Wink's pattern on Ravelry, I got started.


The mandala starts with a simple crochet circle and an inivisible join. I had never attempted one before but Wink's picture tutorial made it very easy. The next round and all other rounds are started with a standing double crochet. Again I had never attempted one but her pictures made it very simple. 


(The scissors were a birthday gift from my fiance and I love them!)


I used Lion Brand's Heartland Yarn and Cascade Pacific Yarn. Both are worsted weight 4 (a lighter worsted weight 4 in my opinion) and I used my wooden size g hook (4 mm) from knitpicks that I won in a contest and I absolutely love. 


The spokes were a lot of fun to do and such a neat feature of this mandala.



This is my mandala so far! I absolutely loved Wink's pattern! Such a wonderful design!




Next I got Sean (my fiance) to cut out the second ring (from the outside) of the wreath frame with wire cutters. (The other rings will be hidden by the mandala.)






After that I started attaching the mandala to the outer ring of the wreath frame. This is what I did:
R1: Make a standing single crochet into any stitch and then *chain 2 and put a single crochet onto the outer ring of the frame. Chain 2 and skip 2 stitches on the mandala and put a single crochet into the next stitch. Repeat from the star all the way around ending with a single crochet into the last stitch, and make an invisible join with the first single crochet of the round. Cut the yarn and weave in the ends. 

And this is my finished mandala for my mom that was inspired by Wink! The mandala with just Wink's pattern (not counting the zig zags) measures about 10 inches. The wire wreath frame was 12 inches.





And my mom already has it hanging in her living room. I woke up to this picture the next day in my messages!



Soft hugs <3