Crochet a mandala with a yarn cake – how to include all colors

It’s very fun and easy to use a yarn cake when you are crocheting a mandala. But I sometimes encounter the ‘problem’ that here is more yarn on the cake than I need for the mandala. Is this a problem you recognize? I will tell you how I deal with it!

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Crochet a mandala with a gradient yarn cake

I mostly uses skeins of 800 or 1000 meter. If you crochet a smaller mandala, say 50cm (20 inch), you need a lot less yarn. But how do you make sure that all colors of the skein are included in your mandala? Let me tell you how I address this:

Step 1: calculate how many ‘color changes’ are present in your skein. A characteristic of gradient yarn cakes is that they usually consists of a number of threads (e.g. 4 in the case of Hobbii Sultan, 6 in the case of Scheepjes Whirl, 8 in the case of Hobbii Sultan Deluxe). To achieve a gradual color transition, one or two of the threads changes color at a time until the color is completely changed.

Example: if you look at the Sultan Deluxe Vienna Crown Emerald, you see that it consitst of 6 colors (white, very light green, light green, green, a bit darker green, dark green). The yarn consists of 8 threads, and with every color change, 2 threads change into a new color.

The distribution of colors is as follows:

You can see that there are 17 color combinations in the skein Sultan Deluxe Vienna Crown Emerald. Note: each skein has it’s own color distribution, so please pay attention to the distribution in your skein.

Step 2: when you know how many color combinations there are in your skein, you can determine how you want to distribute the colors over the number of rounds. The best way to make this distribution depends on the ratio between the number of color changes and the number of rounds. If your pattern consists of the same number of rounds as the calculated number of colors, you can change color every round. Below, you can read what to do if there are fewer or more rounds.

Less rounds than color changes

If you make a smaller mandala that consists of less rounds than there are color changes, you can skip one or more of the colors at the inside or outside of the skein. Make sure you crochet one full round of each color you want to use.

Example

Based on the 17 colors in the Hobbii Sultan Deluxe skein and a pattern of 15 rounds, you can make the following distribution:

More rounds than color changes

If you are going to crochet a mandala that consists of more rounds than color changes, it is recommended to at least include all colors and don’t skip any colors. This is to make sure that you will not run out of yarn at the final rounds of your mandala. It is also recommended to crochet more rounds with the colors on the inside of the yarn cake. The first rounds are smaller than the final rounds, and you will use less yarn for them. This is to make sure that you will have enough yarn at the last rounds.

Example

Based on the 17 colors in the Hobbii Sultan Deluxe skein and a pattern of 38 rounds, you can make the following distribution:

If you need help with this calculation, you can alsways send me an e-mail and I’ll have a look for you.

Organize leftover yarn with a wool winder

Recently, I purchased a wool winder. I bought one from Knitpro. With this wool winder, I can turn the leftover yarn scraps into a beautiful cake again. I start with the first color, and once it’s almost fully wound, I tie the next color and continue winding. It’s truly ideal, and the cakes look super cute!