COURTESY LE SPORTSAC Local foods play prominent roles in Amy Davis' latest limited-edition Le Sportsac design.

Take out food

Designer Amy Davis was homesick for the flavors of Hawaii so she included fish and poi and shave ice and more in her graphic design for Le Sportsac

Mangoes, musubi and haupia float in the sky, while mahimahi and the humuhumunukunukuapuaa go swimming by in the latest limited-edition Le Sportsac design created by Amy Davis, who'll be just as excited as anyone else in the crowd awaiting its debut Saturday at the Ala Moana Center store.

"They just e-mailed me the image two hours ago," she said by phone Tuesday from her home on Vashon Island outside Seattle. "It's so fun. I was looking at it with a magnifying glass, looking at all the food."

She sounded hungry as she reminisced about the plate lunches, haupia and saimin she enjoyed during her short-lived attempt to call Hawaii home, when she moved here with her local-born husband, filmmaker and musician Jon Moritsugu, a couple of years ago.

"I believe in spirit energy, and it just wasn't the right time for us to be there," she said.

Long story short: Their 93-year-old landlord died. His family wanted to sell his home. Davis and Moritsugu couldn't afford it, and retreated to the Pacific Northwest, where their island home offers the comforting fragrance of plumerias and the rain "is a nice rain, like Manoa."

ILLUSTRATION COURTESY AMY DAVIS One of Amy Davis's rough sketches now appears on the Le Sportsac limited-edition bag as the girl wearing a blue check dress with red flats. Davis e-mails, "I draw them first as faces then add bodies/outfits and then start to place them together. I actually TRY NOT to think as it weakens my flow."

"I was out of the islands six months when I started it, so it was all very fresh," Davis said. The finished work "is all about the islands. Every time I looked at something from Hawaii, I would cry. ... God, I miss it so much sometimes. I can't wait to get back there."

Davis will be at the event, from 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday, to sign her merchandise.

Without being privy to the final products, she's anxious to see how the artwork and merchandise mesh.

"I had 30 pages of illustrations put together like a book."

The deciding powers at Le Sportsac had final say on images that now appear on the products.

Naturally, she feels protective of her work, which extends to the music she makes with her husband and band mates. Their band, Low on High, recently signed with the Seattle label Bop Tart and will release a CD soon.

"Anything from drawings to songs and, believe it or not, gardening and cooking can be extension of a person. They're like my babies, sweet-sour. They're very cute, but get a little closer ..."