Welcome to Lion Brand Yarns week, or, as I’m calling it, 5 hats in 5 days. In this series of posts, I’ll give you a thumbnail description of 5 different yarns by Lion Brand along with a free hat pattern for the featured yarn. In the months to come, each of these yarns will be featured in-depth – from August to December.
The first yarn I’m highlighting this week is Mandala Baby, a fun yarn with loooong color stretches. Mandala Baby is a double knitting (DK) weight yarn with a recommended tension of 22 stitches to 4″ [10cm].
Lion Brand Mandala Baby yarn in Arendelle, Unicorn Cloud, and Rainbow Falls
I sampled three colors: Arendelle, Unicorn Cloud, and Rainbow Falls. As you can see, the colors are very child-like and playful, so it’s a good thing that Mandala Baby is a 100% acrylic yarn, as it’s perfect for cheerful knits for children that moms will appreciate because of the wash-and-wear ease of care. Mandala Baby has a very soft feel, which is also good for little ones.
The “serving size” of 5.3oz [150g] of yarn per ball means it will only take one or two balls of Mandala Baby to create a whole garment for a child. 590yds [540m] goes a long way in a child’s sweater!
There are some factors to consider when using a yarn that has such long spans of color.
- small projects may not have many (or any) color changes appear in the project
- the balls of yarn might end in different places, requiring a bit of care to make sure there isn’t a rapid color jump where the new ball is introduced
- a little imagination and an on-line pattern search will reveal many options for Mandala Baby. Imagine a sweater made from sleeve to sleeve, or a baby blanket done in faux Fair Isle, mitered squares or mirrored stripes! Or even Roman stripes!
I used the Arendelle colorway for my hat, and experienced – fully – the first bullet above: even though I reeled off a large section of the center, I still only ended up incorporating one color (the light blue) in my hat! If you want to try an experiment, you could knit this pattern using Mandala Baby as color A and the solid as color B.
For this project, I chose an adult hat pattern called Caramoor. It is written for an Aran weight yarn and 5mm needles, but by changing the yarn and the needle size, I only needed to make a couple of adaptions, which I’ve outlined below. If you download and print the Caramoor pattern, you can jot my adaptations right onto your copy.
Caramoor pattern made up using solid acrylic double knitting weight yarn for color A and Lion Brand Mandala Baby yarn for color B
materials
yarn
- 1 ball of solid acrylic double knitting weight yarn (A)
- 1 ball of Mandala Baby (B)
needles
- size 6 [4mm] double pointed needles
gauge
22 sts to 4″ [10cm]
Hat
With A, cast on 88 sts. Follow pattern instructions for ribbing until piece measures about 3½” [9cm].
Next Rnd: *K10, kfb in next st; rep from * to end of rnd. (96 sts)
Work in the Color Dot pattern (given in the pattern download) until piece measures about 7″ [18cm].
Continue the rest of the pattern as per the download. Make a pompom if desired and sew on securely.
The Caramoor Hat will not only be attractive, but very soft knit up in Mandala Baby. In my next post, I’ll be talking about another soft yarn by Lion Brand, Feels Like Butta.
This is part 1 of 5 in this series
Go to part 2: Sweet Striped Hat is so perfect knit up in Feels Like Butta yarn
