Category: Seattlepi.com featured stories   Whether you prefer your shiitakes sautéed or in a soup, the Seventh Annual Mushroom Festival welcomes all fungi fanatics. Festivities include talks by University of Washington mycologist Dr. Steven Trudell, and mushroom collecting and cooking demonstrations. Cap the weekend off with “Fungi Bingo” and the “Mushroom Munchkins,” a parade of…

Category: Seattlepi.com featured stories   If you’re still bemoaning the demise of Northwest Bookfest (the last one was in 2003!), you’ll be thrilled to hear about the new Seattle Book Fest. The event—a grassroots effort by the Columbia City community—will showcase more than 60 exhibitors and 50 authors, including local writers Garth Stein, Mary Guterson,…

Category: Seattlepi.com featured stories   Steampunks—aficionados of Victorian science fiction (think H.G. Wells and Jules Verne) who embrace all manner of “retro-futurism”—will revel in Seattle’s first annual steampunk symposium, celebrating the nexus of fantasy and steam-engine era technology. With steam-themed demonstrations, an art bazaar, cabaret acts, live music and a Victorian tea party/fashion show featuring…

Category: Seattlepi.com featured stories   And you thought the shower scene in Psycho was scary before—see how you feel about it when those screeching violins are live. With the Hitchcock classic projected on screen, the Seattle Symphony will play the score (removed from the film; dialogue remains) and raise the suspense to spine-tingling heights. Oct….

Category: Seattlepi.com featured stories   This series of preliminary drawings for the Sistine Chapel kind of shoots down the mystique that divine inspiration, not ordinary elbow grease, guided the Italian Renaissance master’s genius10/15–1/31/2010 Michelangelo would have been horrified to see this series of preliminary drawings for the Sistine Chapel displayed publicly, as it kind of…

Category: Seattlepi.com featured stories   This exhibition of 50 color and black-and-white pictures by fine-art photographer Joan Myers showcases the harsh yet magnificent Antarctic landscape as well as its wildlife and people10/3–11/29 If Seattle snow flurries send you running for cover, you’ll be overwhelmed by the Burke Museum’s Wondrous Cold: An Antarctic Journey. The exhibition…

Category: Seattlepi.com featured stories   Mysterious Gifts: Theatre of Iran offers a glimpse into Persian history and culture through the puppetry and bold movement techniques of Iranian performance artist Yaser Khaseb 9/24–10/11 The first installment of Seattle Children’s Theatre’s innovative, multiyear “Connecting Stories” project—a collaboration of theater artists from Seattle, Iran and Holland—Mysterious Gifts: Theatre…

Category: Eat + Drink Articles   Best Emerging VarietalMalbecOriginally a blending grape in the Bordeaux region of France and then a varietal in Argentina, this grape is cropping up in Washington because of its ability to grow well in the hot days and cool nights of eastern Washington. Malbec is primarily a moderate to dark,…

Category: Shopping + Fashion Articles   Forty-five minutes north of Seattle is a small town brimming with global flavor Most people travel north to Marysville to shop at Seattle Premium Outlets or to get their thrills gambling at the Tulalip Resort Casino. But on the east side of I-5 lies the quieter—and original—side of this…

Category: Shopping + Fashion Articles    The Goods:  Puddles are no match for your mischievous tyke in these fanciful red and blue cherry print boots from Kent-based Washington Shoe Company. With 100 percent waterproof natural rubber and a nonslip sole, the boots also have a cozy net lining that will help keep little feet dry and…

Category: Eat + Drink Articles   You’re racing around the kitchen half-dressed, getting yourself ready for work and your kids ready for school—mascara wand in one hand and the mayonnaise jar in the other—when one kid announces she suddenly hates turkey, and the other insists he’ll eat nothing else. Enter Fantazimo Food, Inc., an Edmonds-based…

Category: Eat + Drink Articles   Name: Fran BigelowTitle: Founder and owner of Fran’s Chocolates On having Barack Obama as a fan: “It’s really fun…really a surprise…[it] energizes everyone else who comes in.”Why her custom boxes have hand-tied satin ribbons: “They should look as good as they taste.”Favorite chocolate accompaniment: Port.  On whether she ever gets sick…

Category: Eat + Drink Articles   Dani Cone is one passionate pie lady. After opening Fuel Coffee in 2005, the Seattleite branched into the pie-making business last December with High 5 Pies. Why pie? Cone, 32, argues pie isn’t just for dessert—it’s delicious any time of the day, especially with your morning joe. Her handmade…