beads | Tangle Alaska Blog

Tag Archives: beads

August 22, 2012 · 3:10 am

Crocheted Dream Catchers

Hi! Oh my gosh!! I’ve been having Soooo MUCH FUN making crocheted beaded dream catchers and learning all about the history! I love crocheting and I love dream catchers! I thought I’d see if they sell at my Etsy Shop, Alaska HomeCrafters Emporium, or maybe a tourist at Arctic Rose Gallery & Art Center might find them as fascinating as I do. When I moved up to Alaska someone gave me a dream catcher to keep the good dreams coming and the bad dreams trapped in the web. I still have it! I think everyone should have one 🙂

Dream catchers are arts and crafts of the Native American people. Traditionally dream catchers were made from willow branches bent into rings or oval shapes and sinew for the web. Feathers decorate infants and children’s dream catchers, but all dream catchers are embellished with totem animals, beads, and small stones. (I love to embellish!) The ring is believed to represent wisdom, strength, and unity.

One legend tells of an elderly spiritual leader who had a vision of Iktomi, the great trickster and searcher of wisdom. He appeared in the form of a spider and spoke to him. As he spoke, the spider picked up the elder’s willow ring and began to spin a web. He spoke about the cycle of life and and many lessons. The ring represents the cycle of life, for as we come into life as infants and grow into adults, as elderly adults we must be taken care of as infants, thus completing the cycle of life.

When the spider finished, he had spun a web inside the ring and told him that when the dream catcher is hung above ones bed, good dreams will float through the web’s holes and down the strings of beads and feathers, placing good dreams into your head while one sleeps. Bad dreams are caught in the web and tangle up in the web & beads and stones and with the first rays of daylight, they evaporate and disappear. Pretty awesome don’t you think!

Wishing you good dreams and peaceful sleep.

♥ Donna

Beaded Glass Covers and Doilies

Hi! I’m back to crocheting glass covers! I’ve been making these for a long time and thought I would share them with you. Because I live in Alaska, when summer comes everyone gets out of their homes and stays outside until the snow comes again. Well, we have a picnic bench under some trees and the leaves, dirt, bugs, not to mention the pesky mosquitos fall into our glasses! So I came up with these colorful glass covers to protect water or wine, or whatever you may have in your glass. They work well for coffee mugs too! I also make larger sizes to cover food bowls. If you don’t want to use them on top of your glass, just slide them under your glass and you have classy glass doilies. And when they aren’t on your table, they look really pretty under potted plants, etc.

We have been saving all sorts of glass jars and that is what we use for our ‘everyday ware’. They look really cool on your table! In fact, we have so many now that our cupboards are literally over flowing! The glass covers also look quite elegant on wine glasses too! For red wines I use dark color thread and for white wine, it doesn’t matter.

I love to choose different colors and add the beads on the ends. The beads look pretty and are functional by weighting the cover down. I’ve used charms and buttons too. I’ve tried using plastic beads because they can go in the wash (inside a delicates bag), but they don’t hold enough weight, at least for outside. I’ve even gotten fancier and made lacy glass covers (like doilies) but I have to keep the stitches tight so little bugs don’t sneak in.

Do you prefer a set of the same color or a mix of different colors glass covers? Each one is unique even if they are the same color because they are handmade! You can find the “Crochet Pattern” for it on my website.