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A Spooky Halloween / Samhain! - Wonderful Handmade Wednesday on Indiemade

Halloween will soon be here, a time for pumpkin carvings, dressing in costumes, trick or treating and parties  Halloween has been around for over 200 years - how did it evolve?  To answer those questions (and refresh my memory), I decided to share a short history of Halloween, dealing more with its ancient traditions.

Halloween dates back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts lived about 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France and celebrated their new year on November 1.  This day marked the end of summer and the harvest.  It also marked the beginning of the dark, cold winter, the time of year that was most associated with death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, Samhain was celebrated when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth.

Unique New Handmade Jewelry by Shadow Dog Designs

The Muses have been active - lots of new jewelry, most with a fun, boho flair, have been created recently.  Now all I have to do is to photograph them and get them listed.  Easier said than done!  The newest necklaces and pairs of earrings listings are featured below.  And, to round out the number of jewelry shares to ten, three oldies but goodies that are patiently waiting for a new home can be found at the end.

Unique New Handmade Jewelry from Shadow Dog Designs

The past several weeks have been very busy with a huge (and very profitable) show on Labor Day weekend and then a week long trip to beautiful Couer d'Alene, Idaho and Spokane, Washington.  But unique new handmade jewelry, mostly necklaces and earrings, have been listed in my Indiemade shop.  All of the jewelry is one of a kind, except the very last pair of earrings, the snowmen earrings.  Even though I make them in several different colored collars, the red ones are the most popular.

The Lucky Number 3 - Wonderful Handmade Wednesday on Indiemade

I am not by nature a superstitious person, but I have a real affinity for the number 3 (even more for 33).  For centuries, it has been revered as a lucky number.  I also knew it had many, many religious connotations, such as the Holy Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) in the Christian faith - St. Patrick used a shamrock to teach about the Holy Trinity.  It also describes the three attributes of God:  omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. In Hinduism, the number 3 represents the three gods:  Brahma, the creator; Vishnu, the preserver; and Shiva, the destroyer.  The number 3 is very important in Buddhism and represents: the Buddha, the  historical Buddha Shakyamuni; the Dharma, the Buddhist body of teachings; and, the Sangha, the people who follow the teaching of the Buddha.