New on Pinterest: Vintage Seattle Board

Did you know that 2012 is the 50th anniversary of the World Fair in Seattle?

To see images from that era as well as other vintage images of Bumbershoot Designs and Supplies' home town, scroll down for a few photos and visit our Vintage Seattle board on Pinterest.

Source: vintageseattle.org via Bumbershoot Designs & Supplies on Pinterest

Source: seattlepi.com via Bumbershoot Designs & Supplies on Pinterest

Source: coverbrowser.com via Bumbershoot Designs & Supplies on Pinterest

Monday in Seattle. Picture and Quote for the Week, Faye Fuller's Vintage Climbing Costume

Faye Fuller, first woman to summit Mount Rainier,

posing in her climbing costume (1890)

The mountains are calling and I must go.

~John Muir

You will find a blog post about Faye Fuller here.

Monday in Seattle. Picture and Quote for the Week, International Fountain at Seattle Center

International Fountain, Seattle Center

celebrating the arrival of summer in Seattle, finally :)

Summer afternoon - summer afternoon;

to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

~Henry James

To Market, to market...

...to find a fat pig!

Have you checked the roof?

Pike Place Market is a great place to get: 1. Inspiration, there are many lovely colors and a truely Seattle feel to the market.

2. Lunch, from Mee Sum Pastries to Piroshky-Piroshky you can find just about anything you have a craving for here.

3. Flowers, you can always find a spectacular bouquet no matter what time of year it is.

A guide to Pacific Northwest pronunciation

Above, Rainier Raindrops. That's Ray-neer Raindrops.

And how about these Washington locations:

Sequim = Squim

Spokane = Spo-can

Puyallup = Pew-a-lup

And in Seattle, the original location of the first white settlement:

Alki = Alk-eye.

It is from the Chinook trading jargon, and correctly pronounced Alk-ee. It was changed to "eye" during prohibition because the locals did not like the alcoholic-sounding correct version.

Last, but not least, for now:

Geoduck = gooey duck. A very large saltwater clam, native to (primarily) Washington and British Columbia.

Do you have any more?

Cupcake Giveaway

Help us celebrate 150 years of cupcakes in Seattle (see this post). Win this Sweet Seattle cupcake necklace!

Bumbershoot Designs is sponsoring a giveaway of this necklace over at Glamorous WAHM. Head on over, see the giveaway, play if you want!

Alki By and By

Last week we went to Alki Beach to see the place where the first white settlers landed in Seattle, intending to establish their community. It was 1851, November, in the middle of a torrential downpour when the party came ashore, only to find one building with 4 walls and no roof for the two dozen men, women and children. Mary Ann Denny sat down on a log with her two young daughers and infant son and cried.

"Alki" is a Chinook trading jargon word meaning "by and by" or "eventually". The settlers called this place "New York Alki", capturing their dreams in the name of their new community.

You can see from this photo that the central core of Seattle is not at Alki Beach. If you look closely, you will see the Space Needle peeking out from behind Duwamish Head, the land that is curving out on the right side of the photo. It turns out that the original party spent only 4 months living at Alki Beach before they decided to move across the bay to the area we now know as Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle.

Driving down the road a couple of miles to Duwamish Head, you get these sorts of views (see the Space Needle on the far left of the first photo):

We had a beautiful day for our visit, dramatically different from what the original Seattle pioneers experienced. Warm and cosy in the Alki Bakery, eating raspberry coconut muffins and drinking tea, gazing out on sunny Alki Beach, we read first hand accounts of the original settlement, and reflected on the spirit of Seattle's founders and just how much the city has grown and changed since then.

The sinful seamstress

I've been reading a lot of Seattle and Pacific Northwest history recently, and one thing I am really struck by is how prominently women figure in it. I don't even have to go digging to get at the women's history, it's readily available and included in the books I've found.

The title of this post is directly taken from a chapter in J Kingston Pierce's book, "Eccentric Seattle", one of the books I've enjoyed recently. He is referring to German immigrant Dorothea Georgine Emilie Ohben, known in Seattle as Lou Graham. From all I have read, Seattle was a pretty crazy place, well into the 1930's at least, a real frontier town, with all that you might expect from a frontier town. When Lou arrived in 1889, it was shortly after a series of reforms had (temporarily) closed all the gambing joints and various vice dens and the city was hurting, since vices paid for much of Seattle's revenue at the time. Lou set up shop in downtown Seattle, at the edge of the then red-light district and soon business was booming. Her business was regarded (at least by some) as a class act, a place for intelligent conversation, and a fine place to meet if you were a representative of Seattle city government (drinks were free to them). Lou paid the city large sums in taxes and fees. She also helped out some prominent Seattle citizens by making loans to them during the terrible country-wide economic depression that began in 1893.


A couple of tidbits about Lou: 1) Pierce notes that she loved jewelry and particularly loved diamonds. She even had a pair of gold garters in which diamonds were embedded. 2) As necessary, her girls described their occupation as "seamstress". The sparkly button bracelet shown above came from reflecting on these two tidbits.

Obviously I don't condone the activities in which Lou was engaged, but I find it interesting to think about her contributions to the growth of Seattle, and I wonder about her as a person and how and why she ended up where she did, doing what she did. By the way, Lou's original establishment still stands in downtown Seattle - it is now the Washington Court Building.

The bluest skies are in Seattle

The bluest skies you've ever seen are in Seattle.

And the hills the greenest green, in Seattle.

Like a beautiful child growing up free and wild,

Full of hopes and full of fears,

Full of laughter full of tears,

Full of dreams to last the years in Seattle, in Seattle.


Recognize that song? It is the theme song to the TV series "Here Come the Brides" that ran from 1968 to 1970 on ABC. The series was based on a piece of Seattle history: Asa Mercer's efforts to secure brides in the east for eligible Seattle bachelors. According to J Kingston Pierce's book, "Eccentric Seattle", the original party of white settlers arriving in Seattle in 1851 were evenly divided between men and women but after about 10 years, as the number increased to 200 or so, men outnumbered women about 9:1. Asa set out to solve Seattle's "woman problem". It turns out it was not an easy task to convince unmarried women to leave their homes and make the journey to the Pacific Northwest. Asa's first trip to the east resulted in 11 women returning to Seattle with him and his second trip, right at the time of Lincoln's assassination, resulted in 34 new recruits (he had planned for 500). These are "the Mercer Girls", upon whom the TV series was based.

Creativity is a funny thing. It's the first line of the song above that gave me the inspiration for this bracelet:


The song got me reflecting on whether or not the bluest skies really are in Seattle. I'm betting there are lots of places with amazing skies, but what I do know is that after weeks and weeks of rain, when the sun comes out, the sky does look pretty blue! (Check out the photo in the previous post...) It's all relative, I guess.