Peanut brittle suggestions?

[kitchenklutz]

Yesterday, following a craving for winter-holiday-ish comfort food, I looked up a recipe or two for peanut brittle. The recipes I found looked pretty straightforward, but both indicated that the corn syrup for their use had to be heated to a particular high heat to form the proper hard-crackliness of typical peanut brittle. Lacking a candy thermometer, I tried eyeing the syrup'y concoction and guesstimating by another suggestion ("Have a bowl of ice water near the stove; when the boiling syrup begins to turn golden brown, drop a small amount - about 1/2 teaspoon -- into the cold water. When the syrup immediately hardens into a brittle string or ball, it is done.") but it never worked out too well.

Anyways, two attempts, two failures -- both times, the syrup apparently never got to the right temperature or consistency and both times I ended up with peanuts in a sugary kind of semiliquid glop. Other than the suggestion listed above (or buying a candy thermometer, which I'm loathe to do considering the bad reviews on pretty much all the ones I see out on the market for a reasonable price), does anyone have ideas on how to proceed and get a workable result?

I'm going to keep trying, though. I foresee the purchase of at least a little more corn syrup in the immediate future. *headdesk*