Starting Mandala Madness was painful; the center rows were too small to hold. As the work grew, it became much easier to crochet.
The pattern calls for a second row over the orange center. I may add it soon, now that the work is large enough to hold comfortably. The first (inner) purple row in the picture below is supposed to be folded triples; I didn’t crochet that row into the front loop of the row below and so didn’t have room in the back loop to fold it over.
The base of the orange puffs didn’t show up as well as I’d thought. I’m happy with the way the brown row solidified the piece. The brown row was supposed to be a folded triple crochet, but when I did that, I hated the way it looked, and working a folded triple wasn’t fun, either. Instead, I added a row of single crochet around the post, which you can see in the next picture.
Didn’t realize the picture would be so blurry. It is interesting to note how the lights and darks move. Based on other people’s finished mandalas, the final unit will be at least 36″ across. It’s about 6″ now, and this row with dots fades into the larger piece. I have to struggle to find it in other people’s finished blankets.
The white in these rows is actually a light ecru traditional crochet cotton. It’s easier to work with because it has only one fiber, not three like the split embroidery threads have.
The mandala is almost too big for this bag, so I brought a larger bag on my last trip back to my studio. Wanted to document that at row 34, the entire project (mandala, hook, current color of fiber, scissors) fits in a tiny bag.
Row 34 is the first time I have started working color customizations. The five DC popcorns used up an entire skein of embroidery floss. I will need to add a second color to finish the row because I only have one skein of this color. I had thought to do four arcs in green and four in something else. The green held up for six arcs, and using a 3:1 ratio gives more variety than 2:2. Note that I have not continued the green in between the popcorns: I want to separate the colors and build radii of color, rather than circles. I will make the stitches in Row 35 a bit bigger to compensate for the lack of height.
Ravelry notes from Row 40, April 12, 2020.
Finishing row 40.
Note that this is a forgiving row–no matter how many stitches you have in earlier rows, if you can make the outside row of scallops according to the directions (4 @ 7 and 2 @ 4 for each arc), you will reset your stitch count and be back on track for the next rows.
My color sense wants to make the two rows of scallops more different–they are both from shade 3, and as it is, I picked more vibrant colors on second thought. My husband thinks this is “not like my usual colorways.” In the B&W plan, the scallops are the same shade, and they will fit into the overall layout as such.
I am learning to trust; the design changes every time I finish a set of rows and what was a major decision at one point becomes a minor thing within a few more rows.
Color shifts: Rows 35 and 36 are two different colors because I ran out in the middle of 36.
Parts of 38 are a different color because it ran out.
I could not figure out what happened behind the popcorns on 38 so I didn’t worry about it and simply made sure the popcorns were tied into 38 every other SC or so.
