Party incognito

My 2 nieces and 2 nephews are on summercamp. They love to get mail while they are there so I always try to send 'em something. I never send them a regular letter but always try to think of something fun. This year I found inspiration at Tara's blog. Tara, also known as Mamachee, is my crochet teacher in Alaska. Jip, weird but true. She taught me how to do it when I made my first pair of slippers.

Anyway, Tara has a fun blog called 'easymakesmehappy' and that is exactly what it does to me: it makes me happy! A while ago she posted a PDF-file on mustaches and I made one the other day to take to a party and it was a big hit.
I decided to make a party-pack with lots of party stuff and I included a mustache for my nieces and nephews. I hope they will love it & will move about incognito at the summercamp! :) Give it a try, it's really fun to make!

Mitsy's crocheted babuschka

Another post about crocheting but this one is superspecial. A while ago, I asked Tara from Mamachee to design me a Babuschka crochet pattern so that I could crochet little, colorful feelings.
I love the pattern she made for me so I crocheted them in rainbow colors, took some fun pictures for her and now she listed the pattern in her Etsy shop. Yay! :)
Haha, she actually called the pattern 'Mitsy's crocheted babuschka'. We'll the ones in the pictures are mine but don't hesitate to make your own.
They are easy and fun to make and they are fun to play with. You can easily tweak the pattern yourself so that you can actually make 'em larger or smaller so that they would look like real nesting dolls. :)

Crochet attempt 4: I did it!

A miracle has happened or perhaps Tara from mamachee just mentioned the magic word in crocheting world: stitch markers. As I kept getting the start of the heel on the back of my work instead of on the side, she said I might be using the slipstitches as actual stitches and told me that I couldn't do that. She suggested to put a safety pin ('cause I don't have any stitch markers yet) in the slipstitches so that I wouldn't put an actual stitch in there.
It worked! It really worked! :)
Tara has been so patient with me and promptly answered all my crocheting questions with so much detail that I just couldn't give up. I knew that we would be able to do it! :) Now I'm off to buy some more yarn as I used more then I thought because of the 4 strands crocheting... and soon I'll be wearing my Oma House Slippers with pride and joy.
Thank you Tara for all your patience and perseverance to get me through this!
You're the best! :) Oh, and the size is simply perfect!

Third attempt... right but wrong

This is getting slightly embarrassing... My third attempt at the slippers failed again but I'm SO learning from my mistakes so it's good to hang in there and give it another try. This time, Tara from Mamachee, advised me to use four strands of yarn and hook number 7. It worked on the size: it's finally an adult size and I suppose the yarn I'm using is too thin to use as a single or double strand for these slippers.It looks OK though, but it's not and I know I'm probably messing up on the sole already as the heel doesn't seem to be in the right place. And since the heel isn't in the right place, the rest of the slipper is neither. By now, I must have done the sole five times and I really don't know what I'm doing wrong there. Its quite easy to follow the pattern but somehow I don't seem to end in the right place for the heel to start so all the stitches move a little bit and I get a crooked slipper.
I think I might need Tara's advise once more. She really should be charging more for her patterns with pupils like me! :)

Second attempt failed

After I posted the picture of my first crocheting attempt, I also send Tara from Mamachee a bit more info so she could probably figure out where I went wrong. She told me that I didn't do the soles right as I didn't have enough stitches to follow the pattern.
So, I unraveled the whole thing and started again... This is the result:As for me, the first attempt looked like I crocheted too loose, I used hook number 7 for that as the pattern states but somehow it seemed too floppy to me. So this time I used hook number 5 and it's much tighter but also much smaller - LOL - this is for a four year old I think! I did follow the pattern for size 9/10 though so either my yarn is too thin and I will definately need to change the hook back to number 7.
I did mess up again somewhere on the last row but I'm really happy that now it actually looks like a slipper! :)

First attempt at the slippers...

OK, don't laugh, this is my first attempt at the slippers. I bought this lovely pattern but my slippers don't look like 'em at all. However, Tara from Mamachee, has been so helpful giving me advise and explaining more crochet abbreviations. It's a weird language, I tell you. Actually, I typed all the abbreviations out in the pattern because otherwise I wouldn't be able to read it. I messed up tremendously but I won't give up. Tommorrow is a new day and I'll try again.
It's nice to have a little change from claying for a while. I hope to finish them sometime this week though... :)Excuse me for the bad quality of the picture but it's hard to photograph at night without lightbox...