My best friend is Jewish, and my mother was knitting her a Hannukah stocking for this year (she had been travelling the country, and had ended up staying with families the past couple of years, one year she even had a stocking from her family, but they put useful things like deoderant in it. Rubbish say I! That is not the proper way to stuff a stocking! So I decided to fix that). We'd already found marzipan shaped like the Star of David, the Torah (its a good book!), a menorah, the cup of Elijah, etc. and singing dreidels (scary singing dreidels with italian and texan accents) and a little Hannukah stuffed bear, and things like that. But still, I wanted more. We found "pep-o-mint" flavour blue and white candy canes! Five of the twelve got "embellished." After all, what do we do with candy canes? Reindeer! But that's a little too chistmasy, so it needed a little change.

Hasidic Jewish Candy Cane Reindeer


  Materials:
candy canes!
googly eyes (I used 5mm)
black pom poms (I used 7mm)
brown pipe cleaners
black felt
black construction paper
2 sizes of circular things to trace, I used a quarter and a Tylenol bottle
glue (Elmer's school glue works fine)
pencil
scissors
small gauge (around 18-26) galvanized steel wire
wire cutters


First I made the hats. I took a sheet of black construction paper, and my Tylenol bottle, a little less that a centimeter larger than the quarter in radius, and draw a circle around the base of the bottom on the paper in pencil. Then I took a quarter and put it in the center and drew around it, to have a circle within a circle. I cut out the larger circle, and then, in the middle cut out a bit of the center- much smaller than the quarter. Cut slits from the center out to the quarter line. With the drawn on side up, bend the tabs down, so the circle from the quarter is now open.

I drew another circle with my quarter, leaving a little space around it. Cut it out with tabs around the outside. With the drawn on side up, bend the tabs up.

We need just one more piece to make the hat, a strip that is long enough to go around the circumferance of the quarter (with a little to spare) and about a centimeter wide. That gets glued around in a circle to the tabs on the brim, and the top of the hat. Make sure to glue the tabs to the inside so they stay hidden. Now we have a little hat!

Take one of the pipe cleaners, and fold it in half. Wrap that middle bit around the candy cane at the time, and twist it to keep it on. Now bend it to form antlers, these were just bent up at the sides, down, and then back up again.

The beard is just a big long U with a little U cut out of it, made out of felt. Alternately to make a better beard you could dye cotton batting black.

I poked a little piece of wire through the top tabs at each side of the beard, and wrapped them around the antlers near where they overlapped, but it could be attached a different way.

Glue the pom pom on the end as a nose, and the googly eyes on as well. Then glue the hat on, and you're done!