Seattle here we come!

So earlier this month mom and I planned a little getaway trip to Seattle to play with my Aunt Alane and attend the Sewing & Stitchery Expo in Puyallup, WA. We flew into Seattle on Thursday morning and quickly rented our car and headed down to Seattle's Pike's Pier for some fun shopping. We located China Town on our handy tourist map only a few blocks from the Pier, and headed over to see what we could find. It was such a fun place to shop. Beautiful Chinese kimonos and any style rice bowl or teapot in any color or style. It was also a grocery store with really unusual fruits and vegetables, and of course a fish market with every imaginable fish being sold for sushi. We also came across an amazing book store, and found really beautiful craft books on felting and beautiful handmade purses. You might think that we would be deterred by the fact that there wasn't a single word of English in any of them, but no, after an hour of flipping through hundreds of books we found our favorites assured that if we couldn't follow the picture directions we could have Dax translate for us. We headed back out into the market to pick our favorite rice bowl, and I bought some Japanese candy for Dax and we headed down to the Pier for our second location for shopping.





We parked the car and headed down to the water to enjoy the view. It was a beautiful clear day, even though it was the end of February, and we watched the boats come and go out of the bay.




We then thought we would eventually just run into the Pier if we head back into town, but after some hefty hiking we realized we were below the Pier and had to backtrack several blocks and climb a substantial amount of stairs to find Pike's Pier. Alane met us at the pier and introduced us to her friend Susan who she drove up with. It was getting late so the booths were shutting down pretty quickly, but we managed to buy some beautiful orange tulips and headed out to find some dinner. We found a really casual fish and chips stand near the water, and ate probably some of the best fried fish and tartar sauce I've ever had. We decided to head back to the hotel to start our crafting for the night. Now this may seem like an easy enough task, but without going into too much detail, we wondered around Seattle for 2 hours looking for our lost car. I was sure we parked on 3rd and so we walked up and down looking for our little nondescript rental, until we gave up, walked clear back to the hotel, got Susan's car and headed out to search again by auto instead of foot. I quickly realized that it was 1st we parked on, not 3rd and indeed our car was just where I'd left it! Needless to say, we walked every bit of our fish off, so we were good to start right in on the chocolate when we got back to our hotel.



The next morning we headed to Puyallup for the Expo. I have never seen so many crafters and fun booths. Alane said to be prepared for brain overload, and she wasn't kidding. There was every thinkable fabric, yarn, felt, bead, button, pattern, quilt, sewing machine, crochet, knitting, booth available, not to mention just as many classes to teach you how to do it all. We took some fun classes together and gathered up as many crafting ideas as our brains would carry, and enough projects for the next year and headed back to try it all out.



The next morning Susan and Alane headed back to the Expo for another round, but mom and I had to catch our flight later on in the afternoon and we had one more mission before we went home. After we said our goodbyes, we headed back down to the pier to try to find some knock-off designer purses. When we'd come a year or so ago to see Wicked we found this hole-in-the-wall store filled from top to bottom with Pradas and Guccis. Of course, we had not taken note of where it was back then, and my sense of direction wasn't exactly reliable at this point, so I wasn't sure we'd be able to find it. Sure enough we seemed to just go around the corner, and there it was, looking just as sketchy as I remembered it from last time. We perused purses til we were convinced we'd seen them all, and bought our favorites and headed back to the hotel to load up the car.

Here's a picture of how we travel 'light', some of our finished projects, and mom in front of our really beautiful 90 year old, fully restored hotel.







We were sad to go after such a fun weekend, but knew our fun was running out. Thank you mom for being such a fun traveling companion, and to Dax for being such a good sport about watching the kids while I was gone. Thank you too to Alane and Susan for allowing us to share your hotel room with you, and for showing us such a good time. I'm sure we plan to come back again next year, and I promise next time not quite so much walking!