Thursday 30 April 2015

Mandala Wall Hanging

I was recently asked by my crochet friend Angela McWhinnie Armstrong of Get Knotted Yarn Craft fame, if she could use a couple of photos of mine for a forthcoming blog article about mandalas. She's a talented lady with an extremely popular Facebook page, so I was more than a little honoured!

It made me think of all those projects I've ever done before I actually started writing a blog, and I had so much fun making my mandala wall-hanging, I thought it would deserve its own retrospective blog post! 

According to Wikipedia, the word 'mandala' actually simply means 'circle', and is 'a spiritual and ritual symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism, representing the Universe.' But in the world of crochet, it usually just means a colourful round doily, of any size.

We have a large expanse of wall behind our sofa, which was crying out for something to hang from it. It had been bare for years, because I'd never been able to make up my mind what to hang there. I went through a mandala craze last year, and had a sudden brainwave to crochet a huge, ginormous mandala and somehow mount it.....I wasn't sure how, just yet!

So what I did was to find a mandala pattern I liked, then to crochet multiple strands of super bulky yarn together, to make it really biiiiig. After sifting through a lot of patterns, I decided to use one that I had seen being used as a CAL ('crochet a-long') on Mandy's Craft Tales Facebook page. The pattern can be found on a lovely blog called By Petra, here made in cotton DK and used as a stool cover.

I decided to make mine from 3 strands of Drops Eskimo crocheted together with a massive 15mm hook, having chosen colours to match our decor. This is how it turned out!



This next pic gives some idea of scale....it shows me mounting it onto a large wooden hula hoop, which I had to order from Germany as I could only find plastic ones here in the UK!


And....last but not least. Here it is hanging in all its glory, in pride of place. I enjoyed making it so much.


3 comments:

  1. Oona it's gorgeous and what a great post. Thanks for the mentions too. You are too kind and incredibly talented. xoxox

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    1. Aw, thanks Angela :-) You made me think of writing it! You write such fab posts- I very much look forward to your next one! xx

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  2. Oh really nice post!!! thanks for sharing. When you are posting your next one.

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