Mellow Yellow Mandala

Good Sunday morning to you! I'm hoping to spend some quality time with my sewing machine today, and if all goes well I'll hopefully have a new wristlet by the end of the day. It would really help me out if you all crossed your fingers and toes to make that happen--I've been super sewing lazy of late and I need to get out of that rut. But it's not like I've been completely lazy. My crochet hook has been some doing some super twirling and pulling through of late. I decided to start a baby blanket for no reason other than that my sister is making one for a friend of hers and it made me want to make one, too.

Last weekend I got into a bit of a flower-making frenzy, and I just wanted to keep hooking. Lucy had posted a link to a mandala which looked fun. I'm not sure what a mandala is, but to my mind it looks like a doily. My mom has been asking me for something to put in the center of her super-big kitchen table and I've been woefully neglectful, so when she said "You can make me something out of that yellow" I thought I'd give a mandala/doily a crack.

Let me start by asking this question. How in the h-e-double did ladies used to sit around crocheting doilies and tablecloths with small steel hooks and tiny threads without going quite mad? I used a G hook and DK weight yarn and felt slightly crazy at times. After much stitching, a little head-scratching, and a teeny bit of googling I had a lumpy wrinkly mess and I thought "Ohhhh I might lose my temper." But all ended well and now here it is:

To make it lay flat I pinned it to my ironing board, hovered the iron a wee bit over it, and shot steam at it. The fibers relaxed and kept their shape when unpinned. The thing with acrylic fibers is that when they get wet they relax. Steam is just really hot water, so the fibers all go "Ahhhhhhhh" and stay where you put them, wonderfully soft and touchable (as fresh stitches in acrylic tend to be a little stiff). There was absolutely no hope of this laying flat or looking anything like a circle before-hand, but afterwards it looks like I'm really awesome.

I did have one little hiccup, but in something of this intricacy I wasn't frogging a whole round so I kind of just fudged it in. I'm not sure where it is, to be honest with you. If I had gone crazy and blocked out all those chain spaces it'd be more apparent. The center is my favorite part--

This would surely work well in a plethora of colors, but my mother's taste is much more simple and muted than mine, so no color riot here. A vase of daisies would look right at home here, eh?

OK, so I just looked it up and a mandala is a Hindu/Buddhist representation of the universe, and is loosely defined from Sanskrit as 'circle.' Wikipedia has a good bit of info if you're interested in reading more.

See you soon!