EXPLORE OUR STORE
We invite you to visit Music for the Eyes, both online or in-person in Langley on Whidbey Island. We bought a large building (which used to be a department store) in order to have room to display rugs. Now it has turned into a good place for our collections of antique memorabilia from Central Asia and other countries. It has large chairs carved from local trees (by Pat McVay, our famous Island artist) in order to rest during shopping. Some ladies spend hours going through our old collections and unusual beads.
Music for the Eyes has also turned into gathering space for our small community. Sometimes we have talks in the shop, about recent travels, or performances, by people as far away as throat singers from Tuva. We have hosted a Buddhist Lama and a dancing dervish. We have had musicians from Turkey and lessons on how to play a didgeridoo.
Our customers hail from many countries, so it is always fun to meet new people in the store.
TRAVEL BLOG
For many years we have written small stories about our twice-yearly shopping expeditions. Only recently did we learn to call them a “blog.” For my husband and I, it is also a chance to share our photographs, primarily of the people we meet along the way. Some of those relationships have lasted over the years. For example, we once met a Tibetan lady in Kathmandu, Nepal. She has turned out to be one of our most important suppliers, filling our store with mittens knitted by Tibetan women, and our new felt hats with “dreds” sprouting from the tops. Similarly, a young man who worked in a shop in Marrakesh, Morocco, helped us take our goods in a taxi for shipment, and was able to bargain for a really low price from DHL. He has turned out to be a good source for things such as necklaces from the Tuareg desert people.
We hope that our travels inspire others to get to know foreign people and places. Often I recommend someone considering a trip in a new country to look at our blog to see if it might be for them.
Learn more about the various rug countries represented by our products. Please email us to join our eNewsletter list. And follow us on our blog and Facebook for stories about our latest trips, interesting products and design ideas.
VISIT LANGLEY AND FIND US
We have decided not to sell products online, because that would become another job. We try to keep the business simple, so that it is enjoyable for us and easy to handle. We were lucky to find a place on the water on a beautiful northern island. If you come to visit, you will see tall trees and eagles. At certain times of the year, if you too are lucky, you can watch Grey Whales as they stop and lunch on our ghost shrimp on their way to Alaskan waters.
We are about an hour north of Seattle, and its suburbs of Bellevue and Redmond, and are accessible by the Mukilteo Ferry. It takes 15 minutes to cross the water, and then you can relax into “island time.”
