Mandala Recipes

 On my last blog I had managed to find the photos of some Mandalas I have been crocheting, but as it was a spontaneous thing, I didn't have the info on the mandala recipes to hand so here we go:

Now, I have two choices about which recipe this one is. Both of the recipes are nice and easy for anyone to have a go at, but I am not sure which recipe I used here. It could be 'A Small Mandala' by Karin Ashammar from Virklust. 

Alternately it might be Crochet Mandala by Annie Design Crochet. I know I have tried both recipes and they are lovely little Mandalas, one only has 8 rows and the other 11.

This one is a recipe by Attic 24 and is simply called Mandala. This lady does a lot of interesting small projects and I find her recipes easy to follow. Rather than videos these tend to be photos accompanying the recipes, but she does explain nicely what she is doing.

Rats I put the wrong info down for this one! I know I should have put labels on them while I was doing them, but I got carried away. 

This is a really easy pattern which uses seven colours and a size 6 hook. The video is Mandala Stitch Along with Mikey, from The Crochet Crowd. It has 50 rows, but the stitches are really easy and you don't even need to worry about how to put the colours together as he gives a couple of different colour combinations you can try.

Of course, I rarely have the recommended colours, so I use whatever appeals to me.

This is the biggest of the Mandalas and is called Crochet Mandala Madness (which it really is!). The recipe was created by Helen Shrimpton, but I used a series of videos on You Tube by Esther Dijkstra from 'itsallinanutshell.com' I really would recommend looking at the videos to help you follow what is going on.

This is a series of 18 videos, and to be honest I only got to row 87 of 111. But I had started with a 4.5 hook when a 3mm was recommended and it had already got so HUGE that if I had carried on I think we could have carpeted the house with it!.

I really enjoyed doing it as it taught me all sorts, for example the white spiky star bits you have to carry the white yarn along the blue row, to the next spiky star, rather than cutting off and rejoining. Esther Dijkstra demonstrated and explained how to do this very carefully, so I was able to do it (and felt really chuffed that I managed it too!).

Hope some of this info is helpful

I am sure I am not the only person who appreciates all the free recipes, videos and instructions you can find on the internet. 

I love experimenting with the colour combinations and finding new stitches to try out, but I've also found that you can make some really interesting pieces using a few basic stitches, but combining them in different ways.