Saturday started with pastries at Motzi. I got an heirloom tomato and pesto danish. Can tomato season please last forever? Paul got pain au chocolat. We'd gone for their new softserve (melon and creamy basil swirl) but it wasn't ready yet. We'll have to go back.

Then we grabbed Frisket and headed to the Remington Shop Small Crawl. Hotdogs at Glizzy's first, then into Greedy Reads to browse, then a cocktail at Pink Flamingo. Rum and apple cider with a dash of this and that. Perfect for early afternoon when it's still a little cool out.

After that we drove over to Bolton Hill for the Festival on the Hill. What a pretty neighborhood! Old row homes, tree-lined streets, architectural details I want to explore more. We got oysters at a stand, then I found my friend Jen's booth (Yummy & Company) where she was selling pottery.

Her pieces are beautiful—delicate jewelry, mostly. Small sculptural forms that sit in your palm. I didn't get photos of her work, which I'm kicking myself about now, but there will certainly be other opportunities. I'll just have to share a blue and white snake I have of hers. It looks like Delft, which is totally my jam.

It's so nice to see a friend's work displayed like that, price tags and all. It makes you see it differently. More seriously, maybe. And perhaps you can take your own work more seriously, too.

A few stands down we saw my friend and neighbor, Alison of White Hill Pottery. She makes really cozy ceramic dishes—the kind that makes you want to take all the doors off your cabinets so you can display them. Big fan. I didn't take photos there either, but here's the charming little stand she has on our street.

I've been painting pottery myself this week. Nothing as refined as what they're making—they've been at this for years—but I'm learning. Friday afternoon at the Potters Guild, then again on Sunday. It's a different kind of making than drawing on paper and screens. More deliberate. More patient. You paint it, it gets fired, and only then do you see if the three layers of white you applied successfully covered the smudge of blue you couldn't wash out.

I've been so busy writing for the community site this week that I haven't drawn much. The pottery was freeing—just getting to make something without anyone to answer to except myself.

We came home and our friends Van and Alex came over. We grilled more hotdogs (hotdog day, apparently—no complaints), had eggplant and potato salad, then Taharka ice cream, which is seriously the best. Then we played Isle of Cats, a board game I'd never played before. I won despite having no idea what I was doing and playing what I can only describe as a very lazy game.

Sometimes that's how it goes. You see your friends selling work they've refined over years, you work on your own pieces between other projects, and then you win a game you weren't even trying at. There's probably a metaphor in there about creative practice, but I'm too full of ice cream to figure it out.

I've been wanting to blog for months but it felt like such a production. Then someone said: don't create, just document. So here's a week.

Monday

It’s Monday morning and I'm plugging graphics into the community site I’ve been working on. They look... fine? I drew them last week and was pleased then, but now I'm not sure. Website design is fully in my comfort zone. I did it for ages. But I realized I’ve always worked with someone else’s text. Drawing images before I actually know what I’m saying is maybe putting the cart before the horse. I'm trying not to spiral into perfectionism about it. It's fine. Probably fine.

The weather was lovely, so Paul grilled for dinner. Impossible burgers and fresh corn and eggplant from the CSA. I used to hate eggplant. Now I love it. I don’t think it’s a texture thing, because I still don’t like it when it’s not fully cooked through. It needs to be soft, to almost disappear in your mouth. Paul is happy because he loves cooking with it. He has so many tasty recipes for it. Have my tastes changed so much? Makes me wonder what else I might learn to love. Olives, maybe? Blue cheese?

Tuesday

On Tuesday I made esquites with the leftover corn. We somehow ended up with three unopened bags of tortilla chips after the block party last weekend, so corn salad seemed like the obvious solution. Mayonnaise, lime juice, garlic, chile pepper, cotija cheese. So yummy with the charred sweetness and crunch of fresh corn!

After lunch I did puzzle edits. The job was done months ago—finished, paid, put away—but then the client wanted changes after seeing proofs. Not small ones. There’s always a level of guesswork in estimations, but I sent them a rate that felt fair—a balance between a good rate if it went quickly and a reasonable rate if it dragged.

It's dragging.

I've been timing myself and I’ve already sailed past the "good money" mark, and now dipping below "reasonable." But I like this client. They’re good people, and I want them to feel good about the work they’re getting, so I keep noodling around, even adding a few details they didn't ask for but will probably appreciate.

Wednesday

Wednesday morning, back to the community site. Writing the landing page, trying to explain what I'm creating. It took forever to find the right words. I hope people get it. Thinking about making new illustrations after all.

Lunch was the leftover esquites with a fried egg, fresh avocado, and tomatoes from the garden. More tortilla chips, obviously. We're going to be eating chips until 2025 at this rate.

Still working on the puzzle in the afternoon. Still over my estimate. Still adding little touches because they feel right.

Thursday

It rained all day Thursday.

I did laundry in the morning and then finally sat down to work on blogging. I've been wanting to do this for ages but haven't prioritized it. Or—I'm trying to reframe this—I haven't practiced prioritizing it. Time is finite. If I want to do something, I have to take time from something else. Which means deciding it's worth it.

So I guess I'm practicing deciding it's worth it.

In the evening I sketched new thumbnails for the community landing page. The old ones didn’t have enough visual storytelling. And it needs visual storytelling—it's a site for illustrators, after all.

I think this would be much easier if I wasn’t an illustrator. Then I could use stock photography and call it a day. But I don't want stock anything, so I need to make something custom. Simple. Meaningful. Which is literally my job, so I should probably trust myself to do it okay.

Trying not to overthink.

Friday

Friday was delightfully sunny. I took Frisket to the park to play fetch.

Then she got to see her good friend Chowder (a dog), and her good friend Ray (a human). Ray always has treats at the ready. Pretty sure Frisket thinks he buys them just for her. They're besties like that.

I cleaned the studio for fifteen minutes. Trying to make it a daily thing. Even five minutes makes a difference.

Then I drew. I selected a couple thumbnails from yesterday and got to work on final images. Naturally I didn't like where it was going for the first hour. Just had to keep pecking at it until it got better. Oh the ugly phase. It’s a part of every piece, and yet I still have to remind myself that I just have to keep going and I’ll make it through to the other side.

I made it through.

Weekend

We booked hotels for South America on Saturday. Paul has a conference in Buenos Aires, but we're starting in Montevideo and taking a ferry across. Can’t wait!

In the evening I went to the wedding of an old classmate from the Potters Guild. It was in a beautiful old church that had been converted to a community space. It was a great time. Good food, delicious cocktails, lots of dancing. Were there pottery moves on the dance floor? Possibly.

After the ceremony, I got a text from my stepmom saying my dad was going to the hospital. He’s recovering from severe acute pancreatitis and complications relating to it, so he’s been in and out of the hospital for months. He’s okay. But it’s stressful, and I was happy to be surrounded by friends and an atmosphere of celebration. There are worse things than dancing away your anxiety to Gaga and ABBA.

Sunday was a cookout at Paul's parents' house. His dad's theory: if you're lighting the grill, might as well cook everything. So. Much. Sausage. And more corn. And more eggplant. And zero complaints.

If you’ve been following me on Instagram, you’ll see I launched The Secret Treehouse with a few picture book illustrator friends last week!

The Secret Treehouse is a project we’ve been working on behind the scenes for a few months. Right now it’s part community/part blog/part art collective and we’re excited to see what this little tree will grow into. We want It to be a place to talk about art and process and tips. A place to share resources and to talk about what it’s really like to be a professional illustrator. Is it really a dream career? What’s the money really like?

There are a lot of possibilities, but one of the first resources we’re excited to share are portfolio reviews. We were all lucky to get direct insight from professionals early in our collective journey to becoming illustrators, and we agree that it was one of the most valuable things we could do.

But it comes at a cost. Courses and conferences, not to mention travel, are expensive and out of reach for a lot of aspiring illustrators. We’d like to make professional feedback more accessible.

To celebrate the launch, we plan to do a drawing for some free ones (everyone who signs up for our newsletter will automatically be entered ), but we hope to make them available in the long term.

We also plan to add new artists over time. Right now, we’re starting small, but we want to include new voices and perspectives, artists whose work and spirit excites us and hopefully you, too.

I hope you will join us as we strive to make The Secret Treehouse a wonderful place to hang out!

I have a self-professed brown thumb. Or I did. I guess that might not be true anymore as I have quite the container garden on my deck. My crops are huge right now, and my neighbors are impressed, and I think a bit surprised when I tell them this is my first year successfully growing anything more than houseplants.

It’s all thanks to Monty.

Last summer, I was holed up in my one-bedroom apartment feeling absolutely miserable. Don’t get me wrong, it was a great apartment, top floor, lots of light, right in the middle of San Francisco’s Mission District. And because we got it in 2008 and it had rent control, we were paying about half what similar apartments were going for. It didn’t matter that it had no outdoor space, because the whole city was our back yard. But then the pandemic hit. And the heat waves. And the wildfires.

That summer, we couldn’t go anywhere because of lockdown. There was no place to go. And even though we could have gone camping, we chose to heed the guidelines of no unnecessary travel. It wasn’t all bad. During nicer weather, we could bike to the park and have a distanced picnic with friends. But when ash from the wildfires lingered over the city making the air toxic, we couldn’t even open our windows, much less go outside.

So, like a lot of people, I resorted to escapism. I spent a lot of time dreaming about a home with some kind of outdoor space where I could have a garden. That meant looking at homes on Zillow and watching A LOT of gardening shows.

I suspect Monty Don is a household name in the UK, but I’d never heard of him until last summer. I learned a lot from him and his gang on Gardener’s World. I also learned a ton from a show called Grow Cook Eat, which is nicely organized by crop. Even though I had no way to apply what I was learning, it surprises me how much I soaked in. I can identify way more plants now. I even know the latin names for some of them. And the difference between espalier and fan-trained trees. And what stepover apples are!

So when my Zillow journey led us to buy a house back home near family (for less than we were paying for our SF apartment), of course I started a garden of my own. Our yard is by no means expansive, but I’m happy to start small. I put a few containers on the back deck in which I’m growing lettuce, cherry tomatoes, tomatillos, five different peppers (including two we inherited from our neighbors), and a whole bunch of herbs. It’s basically a salsa garden.

I’ve been planting, watering, pruning, and tying back plants for months and now it’s finally harvest time! It’s a nice feeling going out to water the plants in the morning and coming back in with a colander full of produce.

Next year I’m definitely adding more fruit. I want to have a few different berry bushes, plus some kind of fruit tree. My neighbors have figs, and I kind of want one, but maybe I’ll go with a plum and see if they’ll trade.

Do you have a garden? If not, what do you wish you could grow?

This post is for me, but also for all of you who tend to overthink things. Even now, not even two sentences in, and I find my mind wandering off, evaluating if this is really how I want to begin this post. But nope. I’m done with that. I’ve let it get in the way of things I want to do for far too long.

See, I want a blog. I have so many ideas swimming around in my head, and they all want out. I mean it’s completely crammed in there. Like sardines. Little swimming sardine ideas. That’s no way to run a brain. An aquarium? Sure. But not a brain.

So here I am to share my fishy little brain with you, in all its overthinking weirdness. AND, I want to be a good example, because I want your little fishes to get out, too. I know for a fact that I am not the only one who over-analyzes things into oblivion. I’m not the only one that will come up with a solid idea and then think about it so much, trying to make it just right, that eventually my inner critic will talk myself right out of it.

So I’m back. I’m here, I’m gonna share. And I want you to share, too. Give yourself permission. Don’t do it for the ‘gram. Don’t do it for ‘tok or the ‘book or the ‘ter (that’s how that goes, right?). Do it for yourself. Get your thoughts and your ideas and all your lovely, brilliant, psycho weirdness out on paper or text or what have you, and set them free!

I hereby grant myself permission to share imperfect artwork, tutorials, insights, etc. I do NOT give myself permission to chicken out. This isn’t about chicken anyway. It’s about fishes. And the fishes need our help.