Lion Brand Notebook ®
This week I stumbled upon some Mandala® Ombre in Mantra and Tranquil. The cake of Tranquil had pops of an aqua color showing that pulled the blue green tones of the Mantra cake in. It’s a match! I’m not the type to always be super “girly” with lots of pinks and purples, but I do like those colors, so this combination seemed perfect.
Mandala® Ombre has a different hand than the original Mandala® yarn. It’s slightly heavier (CYC4) and a little softer.
Mandala® yarn has become wildly popular due to it’s array of pretty colors. Now there are several variations of the original Mandala® such as Mandala® Baby, Mandala® Sparkle, Mandala Thick & Quick, Mandala® Tweed, and the newest addition, Mandala® Ombre (featured in this post).
These are yarns that you can simply get stitching with, let it do all the color play, and end up with beautiful colorful results. Or try pairing color with color. My favorite way to do this is by alternating between two colors. You end up with what looks like a complex flow of color changes, but it’s not complicated at all!
Pairing together this type of self striping yarn is actually very easy, especially if you alternate rows/rounds of each color. You can take related colors like I have done with Mantra and Tranquil, or completely contrasting options and it will still work. The many variations of the Noro Striped Scarf by Jared Flood is a great example of this. And based on the fact this pattern has over 15,000 projects on Ravelry, I think knitters agree.
If you want to make your own Noro Striped Scarf you can try using Ferris Wheel yarn for the project. It has the same type of color changes as Noro while being soft and machine wash/dry. I will actually be going over Ferris Wheel yarn combinations for this design in an upcoming post!
I took the same idea of alternating between two striping yarns, but went in another direction. In the swatches shown here you can see I’m working two rows of Tranquil followed by two rows of Mantra. The pattern I’m following is the Shaded Ripple Baby Afghan.
The pattern was written for Mandala® Baby in the “Far Far Away” color. This is a CYC3 (Light) yarn, but since the pattern is a blankie the final size isn’t crucial, which means using the same stitch count in Mandala® Ombre (a CYC4/Medium weight) will work just fine.
There are many free patterns on LionBrand.com for the Mandala family of yarns. Several, like the Wild Weekend Afghan, Egg Harbor, and the Dalla Afghan, pair together multiple colorways.
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Susan Padilla
I love the blanket Erica, the colors flow beautifully. I’m looking forward to a review of Dotted Line. Also, crochet is calling me, it grows so fast.
Erica Jackofsky
Thanks! Oooo Dotted Line. That’s a newbie. I’ll grab some and work up a couple swatches!
Joanne Tomas
I found the ombre a few months ago and absolutely love it! Unfortunately, I’ve only been able to find it in four colors combinations. I can’t wait to find the others!
Joanne Algera
I love this color combr and want to make a ripple afghan. How many balls of mandala yarn are required? Do you have a pattern available?
Erica Jackofsky
I worked from the Shaded Ripple Baby Afghan, but used Mandala Ombre instead. I used 4 cakes since Mandala Ombre is a different weight and yardage than the original.
Susan Plorins
I loved the way the colors worked up on this ripple blanket with Tranquil and Mantra so went out and bought the same two colors to make my own. It really works up soooo nice and the colors amaze me. Thank you for the idea!!!
Erica Jackofsky
I’m glad you liked it! 🙂