Celebrate the new season with a “winter” themed yarn tapestry

As we say goodbye to Hanukkah, I’m taking the glow from all the candles lit during the last eight nights and bringing the light into a brand new month on the Jewish calendar, the month of Tevet.

Tevet comes during the last couple of days of Hanukkah, just as we are about to welcome the new season of winter. In Hebrew, winter is known as horef. All my favorite memories of winter come from my childhood of playing in the snow.

Over the summer, we celebrated the new season with yarn crafts in happy sunny colors (summer solstice pom-pom wands and sun wheel wands), and I thought it would be nice to welcome winter with a new cozy yarn craft, this time with a color palate in different shades of snowy white.

I thought about what I loved most about the winters of my childhood and blended these sweet memories into the tapestry, like icicles that form on windowsills, snowflakes gently caught on mittens, and snowballs made from freshly fallen snow.

I made the tapestry from strands of white yarn (icicles) in different textures and thickness. I had time over the weekend to make snowballs (pom poms) and snowflakes (circular weavings), but I think the tapestry is just as lovely pared down with just the strands of yarn or with the added snowy embellishments (it just depends how long you want to spend on it, and the age of your little maker).

This is a wonderful grown-up project, and if you’re only using yarn strands, it becomes a simple project for kids to do without much supervision. So let’s go make a yarn wall hanging that looks like icicles for Tevet and the new winter season!

Winter Yarn Tapestry

Here’s what you’ll need to make your own icicle wall hanging:

Stick (ours was about 14 inches)
A variety of skeins of yarn in white / off white in different textures and thickness
Scissors

Optional: Tutorial for fork pom poms and snowflake circle weavings

Here’s how we made our yarn tapestry:

1. Start by cutting strands of yarn to go across the length of the stick, maybe 10 to get started. For my stick length, I ended up using 36 strands from 5 different white skeins, with each strand about 36” in length. By the way, kids are good at measuring and cutting the strands of yarn. Yay! A good job for a little helper!

2. When you’ve got a small pile, you can get started stringing your icicles! Take the strand and fold it in half, then tuck the loop under the stick.

Then pull the two end strands through and tighten.

3. Keep going until you’ve filled up the length of the stick with yarn strands (icicles).

4. To finish your yarn tapestry, tie one last length of yarn at each end of the stick,

and trim the ends of the strands if you’d like to even them up.

And that’s it, a beautiful yarn tapestry that looks like winter icicles!

If you want to extend the activity, you can make and then string circular weaving “snowflakes” and…

Learn how to make circular loom weavings to finish the project.

little “snowball” pom-poms!

I loved making this project. It’s just so pretty, and it felt special and festive hanging up for the new month, especially after putting away all of our Hanukkah decorations.

Since (astrologically speaking) Tevet is known as the darkest month of the year, I hope the warm glow that you felt from all the Hanukkah lights and now this cozy winter tapestry will stay with you all month long.

Let me know if you make a winter tapestry. I am going to made a seperate tutorial for the yarn snowballs (pom poms) and snowflakes (circular weavings), and if you’re looking for more crafts to celebrate Tevet and winter, see our DIY Baby Goat Snowglobe (find out why goats are a special during Tevet), DIY Edible Snowflakes and complete Winter Round-up!

Do you have any special plans for winter? We have so much to look forward to! Next month is the Jewish holiday Tu B’Shevat, the birthday of the trees, and if you want to start thinking about getting ready for this holiday, visit our Tu B’Shevat Round-up!

Stay warm and cozy,

~Jennifer