Pepperberry Crochet

Cool Use of the Kalima Pattern

Very cool. Nicolas at "Les Croix de Nico" blog made this. He's adorable, and crocheting some incredibly cool amigurumi, including a USB flash drive cover, and wire jewelry. It's in french, but you should still check it out!

Woven-Look Cowl Pattern

Download wovencowl.pdf (244.3K)

Annual Holiday Free Pattern is back. This year, since I've been having fun making warm and toasty things, it's a cowl/buttoning scarflette, whatever you feel like calling it. I decided I needed one after having shut my scarf in the car door too many times. This way, if I'm having a particularly hectic morning, I can just wear this to keep my neck and face warm. The pattern is available for free PDF download here, it's also on Ravelry for those who prefer to use their service.

I am working on getting a better photo of the cowl on a person, there's one of me (minus my eyes and nose, ha) in the pattern, but it can be a little difficult to tell. This is a fairly easy pattern that uses one of my favorite pattern stitches, if anyone knows the name, well, I'd be grateful. :)

Don't forget last year's pattern, the Pop Tab Snowflake. I need to make some more of those for my tree!

Cookies!

Doing some baking at Casa Pepperberry today. These cookies are made from a recipe in Readymade that sadly is not online, but they're called Dulce de Leche cookies. These are some tiny stars I've rolled out.

The dough is a cream cheese cookie dough, mine are made with wheat flour. It has cinnamon and nutmeg in it.

Top view of the assembled cookies. The filling is canned dulce de leche (which is pretty tasty!)

Mmmm, filled cookies. These ended up being far too delicious. I was going to freeze part of the batch for the holidays, but I think we'll be eating them.

Peppermint Swirl

I know I had mentioned the other day that I was thinking of making hard candy for Christmas. I have thought a little more about my history with hazardous items and decided that I should be wary of boiling sugar syrup. Perhaps for the average person this would not be much of an issue, but  I have broken two bones in the past year in silly incidents (headfirst into a filing cabinet, kicking a trunk) and just Sunday tripped over the cat tree with a full cup of hot coffee. With this in mind, I am backing off of the candy idea.

I have not picked an alternative (although I'm thinking about Chia Pets), but in the meantime I'm *gasp* actually staying on task and making some things. I'm working on some tiny octopi in a peppermint swirl pattern. These are spiral stitched. There's a tutorial here for a three color spiral, I used just red and white.

Holiday Shopping

I know, I know. However, I've decided to make it my mission this year to buy or make gifts that will make the recipients laugh / get some use / taste good. For this to work, I'm doing some preliminary scouting. I have come to the following conclusions---

I'm insane, but I plan on making pulled hard candy as a component of my xmas gifts. My mission tomorrow will be to pick up a candy thermometer and some supplies and try it out. The idea is courtesy the new issue of Readymade , which has a non-pulled candy recipe.

ThinkGeek has the COOLEST stuff ever. Not that I would ever use the Phantom Keystroker, Eviltron, or Annoy-a-tron *coughcoughcough* but ooooooh, so tempting. And a pull-apart zombie! I think I'm in love... Of course none of those items meet the "practical" requirement, but maybe while I'm looking at the practical items they sell I can get a zombie...

And so that this post is not completely free of crocheted content, Fluxx on Flickr has made a spiral I can't stop looking at...