In Which Cookies are Baked and Knitting is Accomplished

We've been busy baking and visiting, and cleaning, and preparing. We were playing around with a recipe for checkerboard cookies (from a Canadian Living magazine, I think from 2006), and instead of checkerboards, we tried all sorts of fun combinations of the two-toned dough. You could use any pinwheel or other fancy two-toned cookie dough to do the same.

I was particularly proud of the ones I made to look like those round peppermint candies, so I thought I'd include a little how-to.

After mixing your dough (ideally with peppermint extract added in not inconsiderable quantity) and freezing it in blocks, cut into rectangular logs.

Next, cut those logs in half from corner to corner (my cuts were rather sloppy, but the results were still pretty nice, I think, so it needn't be perfect).

Arrange the wedges into a wheel (I had five of each colour in this wheel). If you like, brush a little egg-white onto them first to help them to stick together. I didn't bother with that step myself.

Sorry so blurry; the camera chose to focus on the Elvis shot-glass instead.

Next, gently squeeze and roll the dough to stick the wedges together as neatly as possible.

If desired, chill again for awhile, but I just plunged right in and started slicing little peppermint candies. I have some holes in the centres, but I'm sure that if you can slice neater wedges than I did, and possibly with use of the egg white, the holes could be avoided.

My girls played around with the dough and made intriguing logs for me to slice, sandwiches (resulting in cookies that look like bacon; I'll have to keep these in mind for April Fool's day), and snowmen.

Keeping my promise to show you some knitting projects, I have these little socks that I made up for Christmas ornaments to give to the kids' teachers for gifts.

It's a great use for leftover sock yarn, and the teachers will have a little something to keep after they're finished with the little treats that the socks will decorate. Other than using moss stitch on the white cuff to make it look fluffier, I just made ordinary socks, only much smaller. Easy-peasy.

Also, I finished (some time ago, but can only just post these now) a pair of the Innsbruck Mittens from Vintage Modern Knits: Contemporary Designs Using Classic Techniques, which I made for my wonderful Mother-in-Law for her birthday. I had offered a sneak-peek of these back around Halloween, but here they are now entire:

 As my Mother-in-Law has a wool allergy, these are Estelle 100% silk, finished with cotton embroidery. These were knit and embroidered as directed, so there's not much more to say other than that they're a lovely design.