Businesses – Page 25 – Sequim Daily Photo

Paperclip Nirvana

Maybe it’s because of where I’ve lived but there seems to be a shortage of good old fashioned stationery stores these days. Not big box megastores. You know, the kind where you can buy a single roll of scotch tape or mailing envelope and a good quality mechanical pencil. Olympic Stationers in Port Angeles is such a place.

It’s a tossup for me which I love more: a good stationery store or a good hardware store. I can usually look at things in a stationery store and figure out how to use them. That’s not always the case in hardware stores. I’ve always found what I’ve needed at Olympic Stationers. And because they stock so much, including home decor and such, I usually find plenty of other temptations, too.

What’s a nudibranch?

The Feiro Marine Life Center in Port Angeles has a tank devoted to nudibranchs, also known as sea slugs. These are tiny invertebrates. For me, the closer you get the more beautiful they are. This little creature was only about an inch long.

I’m not an underwater photographer. Hopefully you can see the delicate form of this tiny and beautiful animal.

Here’s a more common sea star. I’ve added this one to the mix because it looks to me like a human on Superbowl Sunday after a few too many beers.

Indoor tidepooling

The Feiro Marine Life Center in Port Angeles allows visitors to take a close look at tidepool creatures without the hazards of slippery rocks and crashing waves. And the closer look an aquarium offers allows a glimpse at the stunning beauty and diversity of underwater life. For me anemones are a case in point.This one is aptly called an elegant anemone.

This is a giant green anemone.

And I think this is a fish eating anemone. They’re not as benign as they may appear.

Click here if you’d like more information about tidepool life and where to tidepool on the Olympic Peninsula.

Feiro Marine Life Center

I explored the Feiro Marine Life Center in Port Angeles recently. It is a small educational center with aquariums as well as several tanks that allow visitors to touch sea life. The Center offers a representation of the more typical marine life of our region: nudebranchs, echinoderms, and cnidarians. Tomorrow I’ll show you examples of some of these critters.

Let me count the ways…

I started celebrating Valentine’s Day a little early this year when Doodlebugs, our local scrapbooking store, announced that they were hosting a drive to collect handmade Valentine cards for patients at Children’s Hospital in Seattle. I love Valentine’s Day. And since making greeting cards is an addiction for me, that was all the excuse I needed.

If the deadline hadn’t been the end of last month I’d probably still be making them. I’m not the only addict. The drive collected over 700 cards.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

It’s all in the eye of the beholder

This is a bilge pump at Longship Marine in Pouslbo. It’s an entirely necessary and functional part of a boat. I think it looks like kind of a cute alien creature, don’t you?

Visit to a chandlery

Over the years I’ve been with my mariner I’ve spent time in a variety of chandleries, supply stores that cater to boats and boating. Classic shops have an assortment of new goods. The best, though, have had wondrous assortments of used items. In more recent years the shops with used goods have begun to vanish, making it ever harder for DH to find some of the finer items he wants that are sometimes no longer even made. I was pleased to discover Longship Marine on one of my trips to Poulsbo and we made a point of visiting recently. The shot above gives a sense of the place. Sort of a marine flea market…filled with a combination of basics and the occasional oddity.

Beyond the cash register was an oddity: a block used in the film “Master and Commander.” There was only one left so hurry in if it’s a must have. By the way, it is functionally useless.

Don’t worry, Longship does have the real thing too.