I recently came across this nice self striping yarn from Lion Brand called Mandala. It comes in balls of 590 yards and is DK weight. This one is in the Warlock colorway. I thought it might make a nice cowl. The colors reminded me of my friend whose birthday I had missed due to being in the Caribbean so I decided to make it for her.
I cast on 186 stitches to start and increased and decreased at various points to make it match up stitch count wise. I unfortunately do not have blocked pics but it did wash and dry up very soft and smooth and evened things out! The yarn is acrylic and is machine washable/dry-able. This makes it a good fit for someone who has four little boys and no special “hand dry” rack like us yarn nerds. 🙂
Anyway, so my method of construction is not that complicated. Every time the color changed I made that the start of a new round and started a new stitch pattern. Ultimately, I learned that I should have done a stitch count that was divisible by 10 but now I know and will use that for future projects.
I was lucky with several of the sections that there was enough yarn in that color repeat to complete the amount of pattern that I wanted to do.
Anyway, it turned out really nice and my friend seemed to like it so I hope that she finds some use for it in the cold and wintry outback of Los Angeles County. 😉
My favorite section is the gray diamonds through the cream “caterpillar” stitch (the jagged garter section). I think the caterpillar stitch by itself in a solid color would make a really nice cowl. So would the diamond pattern, TBH. Well, I have two more unspoken for balls of Mandala in other colorways, so we’ll see what happens with them!
There is a third ball that I have already started a cowl for me, it is in grey and turquoise stripes.