Little Kids, Big City
Retroactive Kids, which relocated from West Seattle to Columbia City last year, is the epitome of crafty chic. The selection of vintage and hipster clothes is mingled with educational and zany toys, with lots fun stuff like monkey hats made by local parents.
By Lilium Pierson | January 31, 2008
Daily Find
With locations in Bellevue Square, University Village and Tukwila, Impress is helping to spread holiday cheer throughout the Puget Sound region with its lineup of seasonal DIY classes. Impress offers several classes per week, per location, that help students learn the fine art of rubber stamping, die-cutting, paper folding and more.
By Natalie Bow | November 19, 2007
Daily Find
Knitters can go nuts May 18-20 during the annual LYS (Local Yarn Shop) Tour. Join the yarn crawl to more than 20 shops around Puget Sound and score freebies and more. (Visit www.lystour.com for all participating shops and a map.)
By Kathy Schultz | May 15, 2007
Short Trips
POULSBO -- If you're lucky enough to hit a clear day on your drive to Poulsbo, prepare to be dazzled as roadside trees give way to a stunning vista of Liberty Bay backed by snow-capped Olympics. It's like a little piece of Norway.
Early immigrants thought so, too, and turned this scenic settlement into an ethnic enclave where, for a while, the official language was Norwegian.
By Cecelia Goodnow | December 1, 2005
Short Trips
LANGLEY -- This south Whidbey Island town is a wonderful reminder of small-town charm. From free and easy street parking to shop owners who personally welcome you, a day in Langley can be pure pleasure.
The town has been luring me for years. The turnoff -- not far from the Clinton ferry landing -- beckoned, but there was always something more urgent farther up the island. It's embarrassing to admit that my only previous trip to Langley was for a Christmas Eve service more than 20 years ago.
By Susan Phinney | November 24, 2005
SALT SPRING ISLAND, B.C. In a makeshift studio tucked in the forest near a strip of sandy shoreline, Trevor Whelon fires up his kiln and begins a day of glassblowing while his son and his friends play tag in the back yard.
A stone mason by trade, he supports his family in part by making glass Christmas ornaments and his signature "stump" vessels, tall blue, orange and yellow vases he forms with the impressions of chopped wood.
By Carol Pucci | June 11, 2004
JOSEPH, Ore. Residents of this mountain community used to be cowboys and lumberjacks. Now they make bronze statues of cowboys and lumberjacks.
Joseph is flourishing as a center of bronze-statue casting, an industry supporting three foundries, several studios, art galleries and other businesses in town settled by migrants who traveled the Oregon Trail.
By Andrew Kramer | April 8, 2004
Tulips are beginning to bloom and the daffodil fields are in full bloom as the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival continues throughout April. Sites and events include:
Roozengaarde three-acre display garden, gift shop, bulbs and fresh flowers, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. daily or later, weather permitting, 15867 Beaver Marsh Road, Mount Vernon (866-488-5477 or www.tulips.com);
April 3, 2003
When Duane Perron fires up the 1914 Wurlitzer the 1914 Wurlitzer at his International Museum of Carousel Art, drums rattle, the bellows wheeze and whine, and the mood moves in.
Visitors surrounded by his carved carousel animals can close their eyes and float back to a gentler time when, for a few moments and a nickel, they could be a knight on a snarling steed and, with some luck, catch a brass ring.
By Joseph B. Frazier | September 26, 2002
ELBE, Pierce County Gary Johnson has done his best to attract attention to Knotty Wood, the chainsaw-art business he and his wife, Peggy, started five years ago after he lost his job as a logger.
Hundreds of the bears, cougars, eagles and totem poles they carve from blocks of red cedar decorate the yard in front of their house on Highway 706 near the entrance to Mount Rainier National Park.
"I live on a dead-end road where most people see my work as they whiz by at 70 miles per hour,'' he joked, stroking the white beard that reached to the middle of his black parka.
By Carol Pucci | February 28, 2002
