Crafted By Colette

There’s a Twitter account called Philippe the Peep.  It’s about Philippe, who is a peep, with many peep friends.

Peeps, for those who are unaware, are these horrific looking marshmallow things from America.  They’re supposed to be chicks, hence the peep.  But they branch out into other shapes.  Like bunnies, which are not horrific.

And the bunnies are where they’ve gone for the plush merchandise they sell.  You can buy all types on the Peep website.  They look soft and fluffy and adorable.  Three attributes that I look for in a soft toy.

So back to this Twitter account.  I love the account, and some of the posts are hilarious, some are cute.

I’ve been envious of Phillippe and the peeps, and I’ve looked several times into the website to see if I could perhaps encourage a peep to come live with me.  Unfortunately the travel costs across the Atlantic are a little prohibitive.  So I decided that perhaps one might manifest in my home, with the aid of my many craft skills.

The first, and most obvious option, is to sew one.  Some fluffy material, a sewing machine, some stuffing.  Et voila.  And so “make a peep” sat on my very long and extensive to do list for months.  Until I was sat watching a movie with my friend, idly playing with some yarn, and I decided I’d knit or crochet one instead.

Step one, find a pattern.  To Ravelry!  The expansive website for knitters, crocheters, and other yarny crafts, has many many patterns.  Free patterns, paid patterns.  And a comprehensive set of search options.  I started with “peep”, and after I’d filtered out the patterns that cost money, and the ones that were clothes and other items with the word “peep” in, I looked at a few patterns and settled on this one.

It’s by a lady called Rebecca and the Ravelry pattern page is here.  The pattern link leads to her blog Schnicklefritz, where you can find a simple, clear knitting pattern to make a peep.

And I knit myself a peep.  Meet Phoebe.

While I was knitting her my friend Cayden decided to have a go too.  He decided to crochet his, using the same pattern.  This idea had never occurred to me, but it was simple enough.  The instructions worked really well for  a crochet pattern too.

And so I had to crochet a peep.  It ended up a little larger than Phoebe.  I used a thicker yarn, and maybe crochet uses more yarn.  A row of crochet stitches is bigger than a row of knit stitches.  I didn’t have enough of the yarn I started with to complete him, so he ended up with multiple colours.  Meet Rufus.

Rufus is a tiny bit larger than Phoebe.

And of course I couldn’t stop there.  At Christmas I decided I’d make a candy cane striped peep.  I may have been selecting the yarn in a room with bad lighting.  I’d stitched an entire side before I realised I was making a hot pink & cream peep instead of a red & white one.

But I carried on regardless.  Until I ran out of stuffing.

So I currently have two and a half peeps, while I wait for more stuffing to arrive.  But you should definitely go check out Phillippe and say hello.