Lion Brand Mandala Tweed Review

First off,

let me tell you a little bit about how I came to writing this review!!

Recently, I was given a huge opportunity to try out a yarn that I’ve been dying to get my hands on. Lion Brand Mandala Tweed. I’d seen it floating around on a few instagrams and thought it was just gorgeous, but I wasn’t 100% sure I wanted to pull the trigger and order some. Especially since now that I live in Montreal and owning a car is not in our cards right now (we don’t have a garage and I just can’t be bothered moving it around during snowy season, but I digress!), my access to many of the yarns I’m familiar with has dwindled. So, most of my options come from online shopping, which of course is SO convenient, but sometimes that shipping price can be KILLER!

In comes Yarn Canada. Funny enough, after having all the above thoughts, I was checking my email, and low and behold, an email. Asking me to review THIS. VERY. YARN. Thank you Yarn Canada. It’s like you were reading my mind!

So, long story short, I was graciously gifted this Lion Brand Mandala Tweed Yarn from Yarn Canada in exchange for a complete and honest review of the yarn. Serendipity.

I went straight to work on a pattern for this yarn as well as getting my review cap on! You can find the pattern for the Sunset Static Shawl from this review using the lovely Lion Brand Mandala Tweed yarn: here

Now, the following is going to be my personal opinions and feelings about this yarn. I do not in any way represent either yarncanada.ca or Lion Brand Yarns. Also, this will be an honest review, so the good, the bad, and the possibly ugly. I would never let any outside force influence my opinions!

That said, who is Yarn Canada?

Yarn Canada

So, before I received an email from them, I hadn’t even known Yarn Canada existed. Honestly, we’ve only been in Canada less than a year, and I hadn’t even thought to look for a local yarn website that caters to Canadians. I was still lamenting my loss of JoAnn’s (come to Canada Joann’s!!). But, man am I happy I know about them now! The current iteration of the site formed in 2015, and they carry a large assortment of brands and tools for all your knitting needs. Not only do they carry Lion Brand Yarns, but also a many of the Yarnspirations lines, King Cole, Malabringo, and many others. So, if you’re a Canadian knitter and don’t have access to a wide range of yarns in your area, or if shipping from some of the other yarn websites is just too much (free shipping over $55 at Yarn Canada), then consider buying from Yarn Canada!

The Review

Yarn Specs

Yarn Weight: Medium 4, Aran/Worsted
Gauge: Crochet - 15 st x 18 rows = 4” in sc on 5.5mm hook, Knit - 20 st x 28 rows = 4” on 4.5mm needle
Length: 568 yards (520 meters)
Weight: 7 oz (200g)
Fiber: 100% Acrylic
Care Instructions: Machine Washable and Dryable
Colors: Seven, Dice, and Lucky Penny

Overview

Taken from LionBrand.com:

Just when you thought you couldn’t fall more in love with the colors of Mandala®, Lion Brand® has created a new member of the Mandala family for you to covet. By cleverly twisting two ends of Mandala, Mandala Tweed has twice the number of colors, with a tweedy self-striping effect. This magical yarn is the same soft fiber as Mandala at a slightly heavier weight.

So, what does that actually mean in practice?

Make Up

Lion Brand Mandala Tweed is pretty much exactly what they say. They’ve taken 2 strands of self striping yarn with the same consistency of the original Mandala line, and essentially loosely twisted them together to create a new yarn line. Which is pretty cool and not something I would have thought of on my own. But, now that I’ve seen what it looks like, I might be finding myself creating my own versions of this yarn using the other colors of Mandala yarn that I already own (muwhahaha!)

The effect when knitted or crocheted does give a somewhat tweed appearance, but, if someone would have held a gun to my head and asked me what the fabric looked like, my first answer probably wouldn’t have been ‘tweed’. But, that’s not to say that the pattern created by the twisted gradiated yarns isn’t absolutely beautiful.

And, yeah, soft. This yarn is like working with a cloud. Having it in my lap while crocheting up my Sunset Static Shawl was heavenly. Warm and Squishy!! I can honestly say it is one of the softest acrylic yarns I’ve worked with!

Colors

Now, the colors that they have available so far aren’t the best collection. I do understand that this is a new line, so I’m hoping that there may be more colorways coming in the future.

Right now they have only 3 colorways.

Seven: which features a lighter base and the saturated variations of the 7 colors in the rainbow; reds, blues, yellows, etc. What you’d typically think of as a rainbow.

Dice: is more of a desaturated rainbow with more turquoise and greys. a bit of a muted tone

Lucky Penny: this colorway is mostly purples, greens, and browns. Kinda like what you’d expect from a penny that’s maybe a bit tarnished, with some blues and purples thrown in.

That said, I used the colorway Lucky Penny. Purple is my favorite color EVER (could you not tell) and this colorway starts in a deep purple, dipping into lavender and wandering through some reddish and bluish purples, before going into a few blues.

Honestly, when I pulled it out of the box, though, I wasn’t quite keen on the color combinations. There was A LOT of green going on in there. And, green and purple combined? I’m not the Joker, right? BUT, I was actually pretty blown away once I started crocheting it up. The colors WORKED. And I’m so ok with my first impression being wrong this time. So wrong. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover and all that!!

Ease of Use

I decided to give crocheting this yarn a try first. I grabbed my trusty 5.5 mm hook and went to work.

Whereas there are definitely worse, I did find the yarn split very easily. Not crazy bad, but enough to notice (and I usually don’t, I just deal). I think this is due to the nature of the yarn. Like I said, it’s basically 2 cakes of original Mandala yarn twisted together, and that twist isn’t the tightest ever. So, it’s not a huge wonder that the yarn splits.
Was it something I could easily get past, absolutely, is it something that is going to annoy the heck out of people who don’t like splitty yarn, most definitely. But, for me, it wouldn’t stop me from using the yarn again.

Care

The label says Machine Washable and Dryable. Is it? I mean, I’ve run into yarns that have the same label, and in the end, what comes out of the dryer is NOT what went into it (not naming names here). So, I’m always a little wary of that.

However, it wouldn’t be a proper review if I didn’t toss my newly finished Sunset Static Shawl into the washer immediately after fastening off. You know, just to make things interesting.

What happened you ask? The shawl came out somehow BETTER than it did going in. I know, they make a lot of these yarns so that they’re easy to care for and most of them DO get softer with washing. But, I’d never used this yarn, so it could have done anything.

Luckily, it was perfect! And even softer than it started out! Whoo hoo!

Price

I find the price pretty fair. For $10.99 you get 200 grams of Aran weight self striping yarn. The yarn is soft and overall, I think it’s worth buying. And, it’s even doubly worth buying when there’s a sale on. (Which, let’s be honest, there almost always is!)

Overall: 4/5 stars

I’d give Lion Brand Mandala Tweed a 4/5 stars. I like the idea they had and the yarn makes a beautiful fabric when it’s worked up! It makes soft very wearable garments that are bright and lovely. But, I do think that they need to expand their color options since Seven and Dice are pretty similar. And, also, the nature of the yarn twisted together does make it very splitty.

But, overall, I loved working with it and will definitely buy it again!!

Once again, Thank you Yarn Canada for providing me with this yarn!