When my friends at YarnCanada.com reached out to me to see if I would be interested in reviewing Lion Brand Mandala Tweed yarn, I jumped at the chance. I hadn’t even heard about this yarn yet and many Lion Brand yarns aren’t accessible in Canada so I was really excited to check this new yarn out.
Yarn Canada
Here in Canada, we don’t typically have access to the number of yarn options that our U.S. neighbours enjoy. I often find myself drooling over Lion Brand yarns that are released only to find out that they aren’t available for purchase in Canada. Sure, I could order it in online but once you add in the exchange rate, shipping and duty charges, that $8 skein of yarn, just got a whole lot pricier. YarnCanada.com has helped to bridge that gap by offering a wide selection of yarns that I previously would not have been able to obtain (reasonably) while keeping the purchase price affordable. They ship for FREE when you spend over $55! My yarn addiction just hit next level. Click HERE to check out their site and add some new yarny goodness to your stash.
Lion Brand Mandala Tweed Yarn Review
One cake of Lion Brand Mandala Tweed is 200g/7oz and contains 568 yards/520m of yarn. That’s a lot of yarn for just one cake! It is 100% acrylic and it’s machine washable and dryable. The recommended hook size for this yarn is a 5.5mm (4.5mm needle for all you knitters out there). The gauge information on the label (using the recommended hook/needle sizes) are as follows:
- Crochet Gauge: 15 sts x 18 rows = 4″
- Knitting Gauge: 20 sts x 28 rows = 4″
Lion Brand Mandala Tweed is a size 4 medium weight yarn that is currently available in three colourways: Seven, Dice and Lucky Penny. The colours were all very pretty and it took me a long time to decide which colourway to pick. I decided to go with Seven since the bright colours were a little outside the realm of what I’d normally pick and they just seemed fun.
This is a self striping yarn and the tweed is created with two differently coloured strands of yarn being twisted together. Once worked up, it creates a beautiful kind of marled ombre effect as it works from one colour to the next.
The one thing I want to note about the colours and tweed effect is that just because you get two or more cakes from the same dye lot does not mean that your colours will look the same. The label reads “Note: Balls of yarn from the same dye lot may differ due to the unique effect within each color. This is the charm of the yarn.” I myself experienced this with the two cakes that I was sent. Both cakes were from the same dye lot but looked very different from eachother. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It just means that everything you make from this yarn is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece. After working the second cake in with the first, the difference wasn’t as noticeable as I thought it would be. As long as your cakes are from the same dye lot, any changes should be unnoticeable.
My first impressions upon taking it out of the box was that the yarn has some serious squish factor. I gave it the initial squeeze test and loved it. It was soft and incredibly squishy. My daughter grabbed a cake and started hugging it so it passed her test as well.
How Mandala Tweed Works Up
I had no idea what to expect in terms of how this yarn would work up. Having two colours working together at the same time and with some colour changes being longer than others, this yarn has a lot of personality. I wanted to find something that worked with the yarn and that personality instead of against it. I probably did about 50 or so swatches of verious stitch patterns until I found something that I was happy with. In the end, I felt like a closed, simple stitch pattern would be better for this yarn than something more open or with a lot of texture because everything was getting lost in all that colour.
I chose to use the thicket stitch for the project I designed with the Lion Brand Mandala Tweed yarn I received. I am so pleased with how it’s worked up so far. The colours are beautiful and the texture of the simple stitch compliments the colours nicely. You can see the Tweedy Pocket Scarf pattern made with this yarn HERE.
Have you tried Lion Brand Mandala Tweed yarn yet? What did you think? Let me know what you thought below!
Check out some of my other reviews here: Furls Crochet Hook Review, Kawaii Crochet: Crochet Book Review, Knitcrate Unboxing and Review.
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