Our Thoughts

Awamaki works to make a difference in women’s lives in rural Peru. When women have reliable sources of income, their family’s quality of life increases. Awamaki works with cooperatives in rural Andean communities to help knitters, spinners, and weavers gain skills to sell their creations and find clients around the globe. Through their collaboration with Awamaki, all of the women’s cooperatives are in the process of building their own artisan centers. Awamaki is truly an inspirational non-profit and making a tremendous difference t...

Here's a holiday riddle: Name a gift that is an item of clothing whose size will always fit, and is good for all occasions? Give up? It's the scarf! I LOVE scarves, and don't recall ever receiving a scarf I didn't love. They are so versatile and the variety endless. Pause for a moment to really consider how this simple garment serves so many purposes: they can be used for outdoorsy activities on chilly days, for dress up special events with sparkle on them, for work to bring color to a monotone outfit, and on a summers day bring a tad of war...

As we have been preparing Oceans Mingle we have had the joyful job of buying future gifts for our friends and family so we could take photographs of items to highlight the stores on our site. One hidden delight in purchasing items from these stores is the charming packaging that many of the gifts arrive in. We have received jewelry in hand-sewn purses, colorful draw-string bags, soft colorful tissue paper, recycled curls of paper and the classic brown paper packages tied up with string! We have eagerly read the tags and little notes from t...

We love the selection of bracelets available at Destiny Rescue. This one, the Christine Bracelet, has silky smooth beads which fall lusciously around the wrist. And don’t worry about wrist size as this adjusts to fit. This is from the 44 Stones collection designed to embody Thai culture and design, embracing earth tones from neutral to bold. The beautiful jewelry and handcrafted items from Destiny Rescue are made by women rescued from the sex trade and who are starting their journey to healing and a brighter future....

We nearly had one of the biggest wind storms of the century in Seattle on Saturday, but instead we had a breezy blustery weekend. While the forecast was a happy non-event, it did mean we had dug into our closets to find our cozy fall blankets, candles, hats and scarves just in case the power went out. But instead of reading by candle light we ended up going out for a fresh-airy walk surrounded by fall leaves spiraling around us. Its always nice to brighten up our closets with a few autumnal treats to complement the warm fiery colors of the...

Sometimes the hardest part of a new project is coming up with a name for it. A name must have meaning, personal connection, and today must also have an available web address. It took several days of brainstorming, mulling over sensible ideas, whacky ideas, nonsense words, and words from different languages to find a seam of real possibilities. Then we hit upon coming up with opposites to what we wanted. We considered the phrase worlds apart which brought us to the idea of worlds together. It wasn't too long before we had shifted from the land t...