Happy Summer Solstice, everyone. The long days bring a sense of endless possibility with the sun holding in the sky for a surprisingly long time, telling me to keep going. And yet at the same time I feel an equal urge to just loll about, because time itself feels stretched. A strange and wonderful dichotomy. I’m leaning into both.
We celebrated my son’s birthday this weekend with an escape room — hilarity ensued. On his wishlist, alongside an elaborate ranked list of Legos, was his favorite olive oil. I have raised an olive oil connoisseur. My work here is done.
We also did some strawberry picking, attended a wine festival, and I’m forever ticking off home projects. This week I’m bringing you along for all of it — plus a few things that have been lifting my spirits in a week that needed lifting.
Thank you Columbia Farms for the beautiful strawberries.
Every year we make several pilgrimages to Sauvie Island, just north of Portland, to visit the farms. It is our happy place — one we discovered on our very first scouting trip to Portland before we made the move. Sauvie is a rural oasis: u-pick farms, a wildlife refuge, and long stretches of beach along the Willamette and Columbia Rivers. The farms range from simple and quiet to fully festive, with concerts, burgers, rosé slushies, pigs, and hay rides. We go back as different crops come into season — strawberries first, then raspberries, peaches, and pumpkins in the fall, with a few extra trips for concerts and beach days in between.
Maybe because strawberries are an early summer crop they feel so hopeful and cheerful — a promise of sunny days ahead. But with a short season they are also fleeting. A little sweet moment to capture. This year we made jam, so we can tap into that feeling all year round.
And let’s not stop there. I love the strawberry as a design motif — a reminder of long warm days in almost any form it takes. A few favorites:
This lively strawberry patch wallpaper, with an ode to William Morris, makes me want to paper all my walls. (Image via Hygge & West)
Wrap yourself in giant strawberries and blue skies. Yes please. (Image via Marimekko)
The smallest dose of strawberry energy goes a long way. (Image via Clare V)
Njideka Akunyili Crosby, The Obamas: Springing Forth, 2026. Courtesy of the Obama Foundation.
The Obama Presidential Center opened this past weekend on the South Side of Chicago — a symbol of commitment to community, hope, and the belief that public spaces can be truly transformative. The Center includes a museum honoring the Obama presidency, a public library, a civic center, an athletic facility, walking paths, and a fruit and vegetable garden. It is genuinely a space for the people. I’d love to delve deeper into the architecture in a future issue — but this week I couldn’t let it pass without talking about the new portrait of the Obamas.
Unveiled at the opening ceremony, the portrait of Barack and Michelle, by Los Angeles-based artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby, stopped me completely. It is at once larger than life and surprisingly intimate. The scale is massive but the composition — the posture of the couple, the warmth between them — is approachable and deeply human. The portrait uses a photo-transfer collage technique, creating a visual archive using family photos, historical imagery, political memorabilia, and cultural artifacts. A patchwork of pictorial storytelling that captures not just who they are but where they come from and what they have meant. As a lover of color, pattern, and good people, this portrait sings.
Both of these details shots really show the depth and storytelling achieved through Crosby’s photo transfer technique. (Images via the Obama Foundation, Photos by Marten Elder)
Hardware Heaven
The other day I took advantage of a spare hour and zipped over to Hippo Hardware. For those of you in Portland — please do yourself a favor and go here if you haven’t already. And if you have, go again. After every visit I tell myself I should come more often than I do. It gets my mind moving, my ideas bouncing, and my excitement running.
This three, or is it four, story meandering hardware salvage shop has been operating for 50 years. It nearly went out of business a couple years ago but was saved by the support of the community and a loyal team — and thank goodness for that. These places are treasures that need our support. You can find porcelain doorknobs alongside the latch set, backset, deadbolt, faceplate, strikeplate, and every related component you didn’t know you needed. Drawers and drawers of parts, old knobs, hooks, and handles. Vintage colorful porcelain sinks and toilets. Endless glass shades that look like fancy Jell-O molds. Beautiful old solid wood doors. I feel like a kid in a candy shop, my mind racing through possibilities.
Even if you don’t need a thing. Just go. You’ll thank me.
This weekend I attended a lovely wine festival in the beautiful Willamette Valley, hosted by Elk Cove Vineyards . I went because I love wine, I love any excuse to spend time on a farm, and I love the Elk Cove family — I went to college with one of them. But I also had the honor of designing this year’s poster for the Rising Tide Wine Fest, which made the whole afternoon feel especially meaningful.
My friend from Elk Cove reached out at the beginning of this year, knowing I had recently been laid off from Schoolhouse, with this opportunity. I’m not a graphic designer, a painter, or an illustrator. But I am a designer, an experimenter, a dabbler. And at that point I was in desperate need of getting back into my creative head. This project was a gift. A reminder to play, to trust my instincts, and to just make something.
Looking down from the Elk Cove tasting room to the festival tents.
The festival is named for the saying “a rising tide raises all boats” — a beautiful message about the power of community. I wanted to capture that sense of collective momentum while also honoring the diversity within it. I sketched a wave pattern quickly, wanting a strong graphic stripe element in a bold contrasting color. Then I had the idea to use a color overlay to create a wine glass shape in the waves — wine waves, to hold this lovely community of boats. I played with color and landed on classic blue with a deep burgundy. A bit on the nose for a wine festival palette, but I wanted the poster to feel approachable and warm rather than abstract.
My initial sketches for the poster.
Experimenting with color and type stencils
I decided to work by hand rather than digitally — I wanted the poster to feel crafted. I used acetate sheets to create a long stencil for the blue waves, stippling the paint to create texture in each stripe. Once that dried I masked the goblet shape and added the burgundy wine waves. Each sailboat is hand-drawn and uniquely patterned, with a subtle nod to each winery’s color palette. I cut the wave edges so the boats could slip in and float. The text is stenciled too, keeping the technique consistent throughout.
I was inspired by each winery to create their unique patterns and color palettes.
Here she is! My final creation.
The process was laborious — and I probably could have found a more efficient approach — but that was okay with me. It was meditative to just sit and make. To stencil wave after wave. To draw tiny boats. It reminded me that working with my hands in this way gives me real energy and fuels new ideas.
Cheers to delicious wine and the practice of making.
To keep the summer spirit going, my wife took our bounty of strawberries and made some delicious jam. Now we have stacks of jars that feel like a little gateway to the warmth of summer. The perfect antidote to a rainy Portland winter.
She was looking for a recipe that was simple and really just captured the natural sweetness of the strawberries without adding a lot of sugar or other flavors. The recipe could not be simpler: a few pounds of fresh strawberries, sugar, pectin, and a little lemon. That’s essentially it. I tried some today and she really nailed it. It’s the kind of thing that makes a piece of toast — or an English muffin — feel like a small celebration. Make it while the strawberries are still around. You’ll be grateful in February.
And as a bonus, some closing words from our former first lady. Never any notes for her.
“Hope is a choice. Whether or not we use our voices to speak up is a choice. Voting is a choice. Being a decent human being is a choice. Believing that we still hold the power to build a country that reflects us all is a choice.” — Michelle Obama, at the opening of the Obama Presidential Center
Is there a place in your city that gives you the Hippo Hardware feeling — the one you keep meaning to visit more often?
Katie xx
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