Starflower Mandala

I’ve finished my first make of 2017. And after the rush of finishing off gifts for other people at the end of last year it is lovely to say that it is for me!

As with so many of my makes it was heavily inspired by Lucy at Attic24. When I went to Yarndale back in September there were mandalas stretched tight on hula hoops dangling from the trees outside the auction mart and they must have stuck in my subconscious because as I sat looking at our bare chimney breast in our sitting room which had been lovingly painted for us by my wonderful motherinlaw the first thing that popped into my head to put in the space was a mandala.

I used Zooty Owl’s starflower mandala pattern and it was brilliantly easy to follow and straightforward. I pulled out all of the shades of green I had in my stash of Stylecraft Special DK and a couple of more neutral colours too and for each round just rummaged in my bag to choose the colour that felt right at the time!

I finished crocheting the mandala a couple of days ago and have been waiting for the postie to bring me my hula hoop! I had pinched one from my children but it was far too big and so after checking in with Lucy and her step but step instructions for attaching a mandala for a hoop I noticed that she used a 45cm hoop which is smaller than average. I ordered from Amazon and it arrived this lunchtime.

I’m not going to reproduce the how tos here (click through on the word instructions in the paragraph above for them) but I did take step by step photos.

This one of the finished mandala in relation to the plastic hoop.

And then when it was stretched out and held with stitch markers.