One Resolution Only—Just One

When I was a little kid, I loved school. The night before school started, I'd lay awake with excitement because everything that would happen that year still lay ahead and the possibilities seemed infinite.

The dawn of a New Year strikes me the same way. (This photo was taken from our front yard this morning as the sun rose.) It's exciting and there are so many possibilities.

In times past, I used to make up lists of resolutions in all sorts of categories, a way of organizing my year. (Yes, I do love lists. Why do you ask?)

But the end of the year was always a downer because all the lofty goals had been forgotten by February. As John Lennon once said: "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."

How in the world can you organize 365 days anyway?

So now I limit myself to one resolution only, just one. The issue here is focus. The other, equally important, consideration is keeping myself in the present. And since I believe that questions foster forward movement, that is the form of my resolution.

Here it is: What is the most important task I need to accomplish today?

And to help keep myself on track, I will end each of my blog posts with my Daily MIT (Most Important Task) and note if the one from the previous day was accomplished.

I'll keep it short and you can skip it if you want. But just knowing someone may read it keeps me on my toes.


Today's MIT: Finishing the compilation of all my financial information for 2010 so I will be ready for taxes.

The North Point

The North Point, photographed this afternoon. This is probably my favorite spot on our property. You can stand here in spring and see the green coming. You can stand here in summer and wave to the kayakers or marvel at the acrobatic gracefulness of swallows. You can watch the sun set in that dip between the high points of the land. And if you're quiet, you can hear the many voices of the waters flowing by.

The North Point in early October. The leaves are starting to turn noticeably.

The North Point in high summer. Hard to believe it's the same place, isn't it?

Mosaic Report

Ever since I started quilting, I've become fascinated with the importance of paying attention to the small details of life. According to my Medicine Cards, this matter of paying attention to the small things is a quality of Ant.

"Ant people are active, community-minded folks who see the greater future needs of their town. Ant people are planners, like Squirrel, and are content to see their dreams being built a little at a time. In today's society, that is a rare quality."

This perspective is enshrined in folk sayings such as "A penny saved is a penny earned." Or "pay attention to the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves."

In quilting, you have to retain two sorts of attention in your head simultaneously. One is an image of the finished quilt, the "where are you going" part of the project. The other is the attention you give to making one part of that finished product at a time. It is the only way to build a quilt.

And it's the only way to make a mosaic, like this one that Jay is building on the wall of my office.

These are all acts of patience and of faith, I believe. Faith in reaching the destination you have set for yourself be it completing a book, a piece of music, a quilt or a mosaic. And the patience to understand that the only way to get there is one well-considered step at a time.

This is going to be beautiful, don't you think?

It Snowed: The River's Response

It snowed yesterday, quite a lot. And the wind blew. Quite a lot.

It took Jay and I about three hours to snowblow our driveway and the paths we keep open (that was Jay's part) and to take the shovel to do cleanup (that was my part—with help from Goldie).

Any place that moves slowly or is shallow on the river has frozen up. Fortunately for us, we can watch the downstream end of our island where the river rejoins itself, sliding and gliding over rocks and rapids.

This particular formation is never the same way two years in a row. This year, we have two circling currents we can see from our living room windows. One current travels in a clockwise fashion while the other turns widdershins. (I love that word.)

This picture catches part of that spot, just where the waters flow over the swimming rocks. Now that the slushies and the snow have coagulated a bit, this is the view chez nous until we get a big January thaw or ice out.

One extra added bit of nature news, a bald eagle flew over the house on its way to the river yesterday. A little later, Jay saw a redtail hawk fly by our bathroom window. We've also been privileged to watch pairs of hooded merganzers (fairly rare) cavorting in the shallows right below the house.

Have I mentioned that I love living here?

Renata's Socks

We are enjoying—if that is the right word—the first blizzard of the season today. It is sooooooooo windy that even though the snowfall is lighter as I write this, it is difficult to see too far.

But I have soup on the woodstove and two pails of water sitting in the tub in case we lose power. That way, we will have something hot to eat and can flush the toilet, the two major considerations.

And I'm wearing my favorite wool socks. These were hand knitted by a friend of my sister and brother-in-law's, a woman named Renata.

Not only are these warm, they're also not itchy. And they were made of recycled yarn that Renata reused from a sweater she un-knitted.

I do know how to knit but my favorite yarn activity is crocheting. But I sure can appreciate the skill and talent in these socks. They are a fine knit, on size one needles. They are similar to one another but different because Renata let the colors of the sweater yarn start and stop where they lay.

I love that.

In about three hours, Jay and I will head outside to clear the snow. We were hoping to wait until the wind stopped blowing so much but I doubt that that is going to happen. So we'll try to work with our back to the wind which is really going to be a challenge because it is squirreling around.

Gives me something to look forward to, right?

Goldie Tree Lights On

Way back when our son was very little, about two and a half, my husband and I always paid very close attention to what he liked or was attracted to so that we'd be certain to get him things he enjoyed for Christmas.

As well as the obligatory pajamas, of course.

But like nearly every child, Jesse had his own ideas of what constituted the best parts of Christmas.

He had this small wooden chair that I had made a pad for. It was light and he could put it wherever he needed a chair. As soon as our tree was up, Jesse would come find one of us in order to get us to plug in the lights.

"Jesse tree lights on," he''d say. Then he'd position that chair in front of the tree to watch the lights blink, inspect the ornaments and just enjoy having this pretty thing in our midst.

He's a lot older now but we have a cocker spaniel named Goldie who willingly plays the part of the two-year old in our lives—every day. Jay made this tree many years ago. It packs away easily, is set up easily, and fits on top of our coffee table right next to Goldie's favorite chair.

Every so often, she seems to remember the tree, leaning over the arm of the chair to sniff at the ormaments. But her favorite seems to be the pair of stuffed penguins that we put on the top.

So this year, it's "Goldie tree lights on."

Hope you all had a great holiday. We spent the day learning how to play a new-to-us board game called the Settlers of Catan. It's a good one.

We're expecting a snowy walloping starting later today. Should be interesting.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

I've Been Framed!

Remember about a month ago when I made a Freak Flag for my brother-in-law Terry? I knew he liked it but I never realized how much until my sister sent me two pictures yesterday of my gift, beautifully framed in a shallow shadow box. It's now on their living room wall.

In addition, Heidi told me that Terry used the services of a man he knows through a business group called Business Network International. At their monthly meeting this past Wednesday, the framer brought the freak flag in for Terry and then he proceeded to stand up and tell everyone there about what the symbols in the flag mean (his love of his Bluebird RV, Jimmy Buffett, Florida) and who made the flag.

So I've been framed. And I'm very touched to know that my gift was so appreciated.

It's Christmas Eve. In a few minutes, I will turn into a cooking madwoman. I'm glad to note that I've made it to the holidays OK. I miss Mom and will miss being with my siblings tonight. But it's all part of my life. I'm fortunate to live in a beautiful place and with a husband and son who love me as much as I love them. I had a great Mom and I have a terrific extended family.

Yep, I'm a child of fortune, just like you.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Six Books

I was at a party of women friends last night when one of them asked me how this blog was doing, and if I was on track to get the six books done.

It's going to be a squeaker but I think I can do it.

This photo is one I took in the fall of 2009 as I worked on my first independently published artisan book called Gifting Green. In its 20 pages, I laid out the instructions for making elegant, lined drawstring bags that can be used in a wide variety of ways.

Since that time, I've had reason to regret the book's title because it ties in too closely with the holidays. Plus, I've discovered all sorts of uses for the bags I've sewn and developed patterns for others. So that book is going to be expanded, and it's called Bag Land. It will be out in May along with my other quilt book below.

I'm working on The Hands-On Guide to Book Publishing for Everyone and that will be out in February of next year. I'm already taking orders for that one on my business website, www.SonjaHakala.com.

Then there's the Nellie Bly mystery novel I finished a few years ago. Of all the projects I've worked on, I think that's been my husband's favorite. Over Christmas break (next week), I'm going to to through all the versions I have of Nellie to find (I hope) the one Jay likes the best and start editing it. It's called Exposure and it will be available in April of next year on both paper and as an ebook.

I'm penning another novel, this one set in contemporary Vermont, that will be the one that squeaks the most because I only add three or four handwritten pages to it per work day so it's slower to come together than the rest. It's called, at least for now, The Road Unsalted.

Then there's the book of scrap quilts in which I attempt to leap tall buildings in a single bound while developing a different way of looking at this very traditional way of piecing. All original designs and when finished, it will tie in with The Road Unsalted. This book is called New Cloth from Old.

And finally, there's this blog, The Power of Sixty. When I reach my next birthday, I'll compile the best of this blog, add some stuff, take away some other stuff, and then publish this as an ebook only.

I've rearranged my pages on this blog to start tracking the progress of the books and to post excerpts or pictures from them. So check in from time to time so see how it's going.

Pitching the Ball

I got a call from one of my brothers, Pete, this morning. If you're keeping score, he's number four in line if you count from back (where I'm standing) to front. At one point Pete said: "Did you know that Jim was in Houston last week?"

Jim is in position number three in this 1974 picture.

We could be here all day if I decided to tell you about Jim so let me cut to the chase and say that none of his siblings have seen Jim since 2001. When Mom died, Jim said he was planning to be in the states in December when his daughter graduated from college and he would be up then to "visit the gravesites."

Though I didn't take a survey, I'm pretty sure none of his siblings believed him.

Sure enough, he came to the states for his daughter's graduation but left without contacting any of us.

Jim and my Mom had a difficult relationship. I was too young when he was born to remember the roots of it. But we all acknowledge that as he grew up, Jim's distinguishing characteristics became anger and impatience (which is really anger at the world for not making us the center of the universe, when you come to think about it).

So back to my conversation with Pete. After commenting on Jim's non-travel plans, Pete said "What do you suppose he's angry about this time?"

My reply was that Jim's anger, which he feeds and keeps well, always seems misdirected, that if X happens, he's sure to get angry about Y when Z is actually the cause. Then Pete told me this story that really summed Jim up.

We were young, and my three oldest brothers—Don, Jim and Pete—were playing ball in the yard. Pete was pitching, Don batting, Jim catching. Pete threw, Don swung and caught a piece of the ball. It hopped up—and hit Jim in the face.

Jim, enraged, stood up and lit off after Pete. "What are you hitting me for?" Pete asked. "I didn't hit you with the ball."

"But you pitched it," Jim roared.

So Jim sits in Peru, nursing an anger no one in his family understands but him. What an impractical—and sad—way to live a life.

The Ultimate Macaroni and Cheese

The other night I finished Harry Potter 6 (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince). It was Thursday. I had had a Mom day and was feeling kind of teary.

To tell you the truth, it was the third or fourth Mom day in a row, not a time filled with big gulps of grief but more feeling her close by and missing her.

When I finished HP6, I pushed it back in its place on my pleasure-reading shelves then stood there looking at the titles, trying to figure out what I wanted to read next.

I was tired, a bit blue, and nothing seemed to fit my low mood. So I retreated to the bookshelves in my bedroom where I house my stash of classics.

And I reached for my ultimate comfort food, a Jane Austen. This time, it was Pride and Prejudice. I chose it, I think, because Jay found this story about Jane's soaring popularity in the Wall Street Journal and this book, in particular, was the one the article mentioned.

I'm at the place where Elizabeth is visiting her friend Charlotte Lucas (now Collins) and Mr. Darcy has showed up for the express purpose (though Elizabeth doesn't know it yet) of proposing to her. (Did you know that Darcy's first name is Fitzwilliam? Can you imagine naming your child that?)

As I sit here at the birth of the New Year (which starts just after 6:30 this evening when the sun's rays hit the Tropic of Capricorn directly, the cosmic moment of the Solstice), I realize how much I enjoy the pleasure of reading without rushing and creating without a deadline breathing down my neck.

A moment of peace at the still point of the world's turning.

Happy Solstice to you all.

Celebrating the Last Day of Fall 2010

Early goldenrod appears on our swimming rocks just as the calendar changes to September.

Beech leaves starting to yellow in late September.

The last orange leaves left on a staghorn sumac in early October.

Oak leaves are among the last to change from green to color in late October.

The tall grass on the path by the river is going to seed in late October.

The first frost lays on a Christmas fern in late November.

The leaves are gone until spring by Thanksgiving.

Though it did melt, December brought us snow early.

A Journey to Bag Land

In Bag Land, there is no purpose that can't be satisfied with a bag of the right shape and size.

In Bag Land, a bag can be utilitarian and beautiful or beautiful and utilitarian. There are no other choices.

I bring this up because I've had a recent experience with the bag in the photograph. I made it last year as part of the inventory I created as part of my book, Gifting Green. I also toted it and others like it to a crafts fair from which most of them were toted home again.

(There are lessons here that come under the heading: I'm glad I did this once so I know how not to do it again.)

The snowflake motif you see on the side is a piece of wired ribbon that came on a gift given to my husband and I by our son's then-girlfriend. I stitched it on a piece of white-on-white fabric before fashioning the rest of the bag.

I made only three of these because that was all the ribbon I had.

Last October, when my youngest brother Dave and my sister-in-law Martha were here, I pulled out some of my bag inventory to give to her. Martha gravitated to this bag immediately.

When she and Dave returned to the Cape to see Martha's Mom before leaving for home, Martha took out the bags and showed them to her Mom—who fell in love with this one.

Martha's Mom, Brenda, is a supporter of the Thornton Burgess Museum in Sandwich on the Cape. (Burgess wrote a number of children's books collected as the Mother West Wind stories.) The museum was having a silent auction as a fundraiser. Brenda donated this bag—which went on to receive one of the highest bids in the auction. Brenda reports that people just loved it.

There are a couple of lessons here. One is that stories can and do develop from events that go almost unnoticed at the time. Second, that setting has a lot to do with the value folks place on an object. In the crafts fair, this little number went all but unnoticed. At a museum's silent auction, it was prized.

It's part and parcel of understanding who your audience really is and the willingness to experiment to find it.

The 2011 Hakalendars Are in the Mail!

Getting Back to the Hakalendar for 2011

Goldie and I are sharing lunch while I write this and print out the 29 copies of the 2011 Hakalendar. You would think, given the number of copies and the number of times that I've made a Hakalendar, that this part of the process would be simply a press of a button.

But I'm here to tell ya, it's not.

Let me try to explain why because it's good practice for the chapters on private publishing that I'm working on in my latest book, The Hands-On Guide to Book Publishing for Everyone that's coming out in February.

I think that it helps to see what a page of the calendar looks like after it's printed. Above, you have a view of the cover of the calendar. In real life, this is printed on photo paper that's 8 1/2 x 11. When all the pages are assembled, they will be folded in half inside this cover.

So what you're actually viewing here is the back and front covers together on the same page. The reason the back cover images and text are printed upside down is so they will appear right side up when the whole piece is folded. Try this experiment for yourself if this is hard to visualize.

Take a sheet of paper, doesn't matter what size, and write your first name near the top and your last name near the bottom. Fold it in half across the shorter dimension. Hold the fold at the top. You should see your last name, right side up. Now turn your paper over, still holding the fold at the top. You should see your first name but upside down.

Unfold the paper, holding it so both names are still right side up. Cross out your first name, turn the paper so your last name is now upside down. Write your first name at the bottom of the page. Refold and  repeat the same experiment described above. Now you should see both your first and last names right side up.

When you unfold your sheet, one of your names should appear upside down.

That is what I did on this cover, place the images and text so that, when folded, they're all going in the correct direction for reading and viewing.

In the printing industry, this process of figuring out what direction something needs to lie is called "imposition."

There. In the inimitable words of John Lennon: "Thanks very much and I hope I passed the audition."

Harry Potter 6

I haven't been reading much lately because I've been crocheting or sewing at night or watching a DVD with Jay.

But I was at the 2/3rds point of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince for a while and thought now was the time to finish up.

I also rented the HP 6.0 DVD from Netflix. It's the second time I've seen the movie and I have to say, it wears better the second time than it did the first.

My initial concern was the scene when Dumbledore has to drink a nasty potion concocted by Dick Cheney (oops, sorry, I mean Voldemort or Tom Riddle, as Dumbledore prefers to call him). The potion causes Dumbledore to relive his worst nightmare. In the book, this is rather vividly portrayed though you're not quit sure of the meaning of Dumbledore's words. But that meaning becomes very clear—and it's an important thread in the story—in book 7.

My take-away is that JK Rowling's books get longer and more complex as they progress. As a consequence, it became more and more difficult to squeeze the book's many nuances into a movie. What you end up with a lot of ellipses so if you hadn't read the books, I think some of the action on the screen wouldn't make sense.

All of this HP 6.0 activity is prelude to seeing HP 7.1 during Christmas week at a really good theater in Woodstock (the Town Hall) with a biggish screen. I always believe you should treat yourself to something really good this time of year and this is part of my gift to myself.

Getting Inspired

Back in the early 1990s, an artist friend of ours named Gary Hamel gifted us with a handmade calendar.

I thought it was a great idea and it inspired me to start making my own family calendars for Christmas. Like Gary's, my first effort was hand drawn and hand lettered. I included the birthdays and anniversaries of everyone in my immediate family and some pithy sayings (I love pith). It was a hit.

My brother Paul once asked me how many hours it took to make one but I had no idea because I kept getting more elaborate as the technology improved, I could use color, and I learned more and more about desktop publishing.

In really busy years, the Hakalendar became just one more thing I had to do in December and then, like anything that doesn't get attention, it kinda disappeared from my list of things to do.

But my Mom's death brought the need for this sort of family connection back to me. Over the years, we've grown away from the need to get gifts which saves a lot of wear and tear and time. I downsized to what's called a mini-calendar, done on 8 1/2 x 11 sheets folded in half with color and pictures only on the front and back covers.

You can see the Hakalendar in this picture as it developed. Bottom right are folded sheets of paper with the handwriting on them. This is called the dummy. It's a guide to setting up the right months in the right places so that when I print the whole piece, it comes out the way it should.

In the top right, you can see the first print of the calendar done on copy paper. This is the point where I check to be sure that what I've created prints correctly.

Top left is a test print on photo paper of the cover to check the quality. In the middle on the right is the first finished copy printed on the paper I've chosen for this project. This year, with so many past Hakalendars for reference, I was able to fill in something for every day of the year. I also expanded my audience by including all of my first cousins and two aunts.

And I managed to make a contact info list that included everyone, a very handy reference, I think.

The Book Grows

I'm scrambling to write and print a 2011 edition of the Hakalendar. This is a private publishing project that I began in 1992, as far as I can recall, to help the members of my family remember one another's birthdays.

I haven't been regular about it. It takes time. But this year, with Mom gone and her central role as our collective memory, I knew I had to bring it back.

It's changed. I'm expanding the circulation. And this picture, of the growing design for my latest quilt book, is just to keep you amused until I can talk more about the Hakalendar tomorrow.

A Garden of Flowers to Celebrate an Eloquently Rainy Day

A butterfly sups on the blossoms of a dames rocket in May. The dames rockets were incredible this year.

Feverfew in bloom in early summer. The last of these blooms was open in November.

A clematis flower, the first year this bloomed for us.

Closeup of the top of an allium in spring bloom.

Blue aquatic flower among many we found kayaking on Spectacle Pond in Enfield, NH

A bachelor button bud among the evening primrose (sundrops).

Booking Along

Now that my main sewing machine is in the sewing machine hospital and I've finally set up my smaller Hobby Pfaff for stitching, I've returned to work on my next quilt book.

I've got a working title: New Cloth from Old. In it, I'm going to explore different ways to use scrap fabric, considering it an important design element rather than something to use up.

Over the years, primarily because of my work on Teach Yourself Visually Quilting, I've accumulated a lot of odd blocks or partially-done pieces. Like the three-strip piece in the center of this block.

These three pieces were part of a photo shoot in that book for a small quilt featured in the strip-piecing segment. The pattern in that book is called Rail Fence and it visually zigzags over the surface of the quilt in a regular way.

Now this leftover bit of fabric from a long-ago photo shoot is now the center of another block. This one is called Courthouse Steps, the most important variation of the Log Cabin pattern and one of my favorite blocks. It is so versatile.

There are 24 of these blocks to match the 24 blocks I made previously that used scrap as a frame around a solid green center. I put a picture of one of those at the bottom of this post.

Now here's the design challenge. I have 48 blocks all together. I need to keep three for the step-by-step panels that will become part of my workshop teaching kit. That leaves 45. I want to demonstrate different ways that the same blocks can be used in a quilt. I plan to use nine blocks (the Nine Patch being the most ubiquitous pattern in all of quilting) in each quilt.

Five ways to use scrap blocks in a quilt.

And away we go!

An Accumulation of Details

From a certain perspective, you could almost believe that this picture was taken on a cruise among the glaciers in Alaska.

But it's actually a congregation of thousands upon thousands of minute ice crystals that formed upstream in the White River, floated down to our position on the water then joined with a bunch of neighbors to form what appears to be a sheet of solid ice.

But it's not, at least not today.

When we first moved here, we were ice novices. My hometown growing up had lots of ponds, lakes, marshes, and some mountain streams. But no rivers. So my experience of ice is the formation of sheets that get progressively thicker as winter progresses then thin out as March approaches.

You would think that water is water and ice formation would be the same but living here has convinced me that water is truly the most magical of all beings. And yes, life on a river will convince you that H2O is very much alive.

Ice forms in two ways here. There's the coagulation along the shore or around objects—stones, trees—in the stream. But most of it starts as the ice crystals I described above. And this doesn't happen just because it's cold. It happens more on cloudy days than sunny. It can be too cold to form ice. As the days go by, these "slushies," as we call them, get caught in currents and spin into free floating discs that grow until they fill up whatever nook or cranny they find themselves in. Then they stop spinning and settle into bumpy ice that increases with the passing of winter.

This stuff, if there's enough of it, hisses as it floats downstream. This is particularly noticeable at the end of winter when the ice breaks up into massive chunks for ice out. As you walk by, the chunks clunk and thump against one another while the slush hisses among them.

And it all begins with tiny ice crystals, just like all change. We often fall into the lazy habit of believing that change has to be massive to be effective. But change is the slow accumulation of one detail laid on another.

Think about that. If you want to change something about yourself or your way of living, the way to begin might be to alter one small part of your morning routine or the route you take to work. If you want change, you need to invite it in.

In order to do something you've never done before, you must open yourself to the new.

Blessed Are the Fixers...

... for they shall teach the rest of us what's important.

I own a 2004 red Toyota Corolla. I love my car and even indulged myself in a vanity license plate for it. (ISTARI which means wizards in Elvish in the Tolkien trilogy.)

When Jay and I were researching cars, we both had a favorite in mind. His was a PT Cruiser (cute). Mine was a Volkswagen beetle (cuter).

I wanted a bug so bad. We test drove one and it handled like a dream. But we hesitated because cars are a big purchase and we wanted to get ti right.

Now my brother-in-law Terry is an ace mechanic. (That's Terry and I in a picture my sister took of us on South Cape Beach in early September.)

We often joke in this house that all Terry has to do is let his hands hover over a car's engine and it is healed. (I'm sure he wishes it was that easy.)

My sister Heidi runs the office of their business, Mr. T's Auto Repair, down on Cape Cod in Mashpee, Massachusetts. While Heidi doesn't do major repairs (she has been known to do oil changes), she's sure savvy about cars, what works, what doesn't, the price of parts, common problems, etc.

I respect both of their opinions in everything automotive enormously. When I asked what they recommended for cars, the first word out of their mouths was "Toyota." The second word was "Honda."

Why? Terry and Heidi have an up-close and personal view of how the cars and trucks we drive are engineered, how they are made, not just how they look which is, of course, what we all get sold.

I was still clinging to my VW dream when my sister told me how Terry has to drop the whole engine in a VW bug in order to change the headlight bulb on the driver's side. The whole engine. I'll let you imagine how expensive that can be.

Talk about dumb engineering.

I bring this up because yesterday, I had to bring my main Pfaff sewing machine to be repaired. I broke a needle off in its bobbin case and after one visit to a repair shop, it would sew but the stitching was totally off. My once favorite sewing partner had become a major hindrance.

Through the recommendation of a friend, I drove 75 miles round-trip to Newport, NH to seek out the skills of one Michael Jarvis. He is absolutely the kind of business person that we should all be.

He spent an hour of his time with me, walking me through my machine to show me how it should operate and what, probably, was wrong. In that hour, I learned more about my machine, about thread, and about needles than anyone else—including top-end books—has ever taught me.

It was so worth the drive. And believe me, if I ever decide I need another sewing machine, you know whose recommendation I will seek.

The Novel in the Desk Drawer

Nearly every author I know has a novel gathering dust somewhere, either in a drawer or on a hard drive.

My dusty novel is called Exposure. It's a history mystery starring the very real 19th-century journalist named Nellie Bly.

I love good history mysteries and am especially fond of the late 19th century. Not sure why. I think that a fondness for certain eras is a lot like a fondness for a certain color or ice cream. No rational reason why. It just is.

Before I started doing research on Ms. Bly, I was vaguely aware of her name and that she had something to do with going around the world in 80 days. (Actually, she did it in just less than 77.)

But a few years ago, when the Pulitzer prizes came out, I read something about Joseph Pulitzer that referenced Nellie. One thing led to another and I realized just how important she was.

Nellie was a barrier breaker. She was the very first woman hired by a newspaper to do real news, not the sob sister stuff that other women always got stuck doing. Her first story for Pulitzer's World was an exposé of the cruel conditions that inmates endured in New York's most infamous asylum.

Nellie did this by faking her own insanity and getting herself committed. Once inside, she dropped the pretense but no one seemed to care. If her editor on the World hadn't come to her rescue, Nellie may never have gotten back out.

Yep, she was a gutsy lady.

When I finished this book, I sent out a query letter with a writing sample to ten agents at the same time. In less than four days, I had three agents contact me who were interested in seeing the whole book. To say I was thrilled—even as long as I've been in this business—is a tremendous understatement. 

But then it began. One wanted this edited. Another wanted that changed. The third needed something else. By the time I had tried to accommodate all the requests, the book had fallen flat for me and none of the agents accepted it for prime time.

That was before I started publishing my own books.

My husband read one of the first incarnations of Exposure and every once in a while, he brings up how much he liked it and why don't I publish it, etc. Finally, I think enough time has elapsed and I'm ready to tackle it again. I needed enough time and distance to see it clearly.

So the hunt is on in my files to see if we can find that older draft so I can polish it with a fresh eye. And come April 2011, Nellie will be released.

Stay tuned.

A Remembrance of Things Past

Thirty years ago tomorrow morning, I was five months pregnant with my son, Jesse. My husband and I were awake early, which is par for the course in our lives. (My husband seems to believe that sleeping past seven is a sin.)

As now, our alarm clock was the radio. We lived in New Jersey then (long story) so we were tuned to WNEW in the city. We woke up with a John Lennon song playing.

Nice way to start the day.

This was followed by a second song.

Hmm, that's strange to play the same artist twice in a row.

Then a third Lennon song followed with the deejay breaking in to say that he planned to play Lennon all morning because of the tragic events of the evening before.

Jay and I were cuddled up together but our heads drew apart at this announcement and we stared at one another. No, not John.

Please.

Not John.

Four months later, as I struggled to wake up from anesthesia following the C-section birth of our son, someone (I think it was a nurse of some kind) came into my room with a clipboard in hand. "What are you going to name your son?" she asked.

Now Jay and I had had a long agreement that Jesse would be named Jesse because it was the only name we both liked. But we'd never settled on a middle name, selecting and rejecting several over the months of my pregnancy.

But in my daze, I knew there was only one name that fit. "Lennon," I said. And proceeded to spell it so the nurse wouldn't get it confused with Vladimir's last name. I think that children need names they can grow into.

Fast forward about 20 years and Jesse and I are in Ohio, checking out his selected college, Ohio University. We flew in and out of Cleveland Airport, the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

As good fortune would have it, the hall was host to a John Lennon retrospective. The building is shaped like a skewed pyramid, and the top two floors were filled with his guitars, a small bed from the Dakota apartment, and enlarged copies of his working drafts of such songs as Imagine, Mother, and others.

I'm fascinated by other creative people's working drafts. They give you a glimpse into how other people's heads work. I noticed there were only one or two changes in the whole of Imagine so I can assume that it sprang more or less whole from his head. Other songs, with lots of cross outs and changes, had obviously been more of a struggle.

My son, who sure knows his Mom, had gone off on his own but knew he would find me in that part of the building. For 20 years, Jesse had, like so many children, struggled to understand why he got saddled with his particular middle name. John Lennon was something Jesse just didn't get other than knowing his Mom really admired him. After all, how many Moms have huge posters of a rock musician on their studio walls like I do. (This picture is of my favorite poster of John and it's been a fixture in my studio for more than a decade.)

In a small theater off to one side, the museum had the movie Imagine on a tape loop and Jesse and I ducked in. The film is a montage of Lennon's life, well told. I could feel Jesse's focus, trying to understand something about this man and, by extension, his Mom.

We had to leave before the film finished in order to catch our plane but as we made our way out of the museum, imagine (that word again) my delight to hear Jesse say "OK, now I get it."

Children need names they can grow into.

Puzzling

The New York Times had three articles in today's paper about crossword puzzles—well, actually puzzles in general—and the people who love them.

Until a few years ago, word nerd that I am, I never did crossword puzzles. And then I read a mystery novel that revolved around crosswords and got intrigued. Now I can whip through the ones that appear in my local paper in 15 minutes or less. (That's excluding Sunday's edition which is tougher and which I haven't really focused on yet.)

I've long believed that one of the reasons I love to quilt is that piecing a top is actually puzzle making where you get to make the pieces and put them together. When I watch my husband make a cabinet or drawer or anything else out of wood, I realize he's using the same process.

Graphic design is the same, taking bits from other places, ideas that have been sparked by something you've seen or heard and putting them together in a way that's distinct and, hopefully, interesting. So is soup-making, garden design, enjoying a good mystery novel, even getting getting dressed in a conscious way in the morning. It's all putting smaller bits together to make something new to solve a problem. And with so many HUGE problems in our lives, solving the little ones creates feeling-good moments.

The articles in the Times, one of them especially, talked about the science behind the love of solving things like math or crossword puzzles, that this activity triggers an opening of the mind where non-linear solutions appear as if by magic. It's the place where inspiration comes from.

Hmmm, let's see, 17 Down, a six-letter word meaning "prior to."

The Power of Soup

I'm scheduled to attend a meeting tonight during supper time so I won't be here to put something tasty together for our evening meal. But that's the miracle of soup—I can throw it together now and we can all eat on our own schedules.

There are very, very, very few soups that I make to recipe. Usually, if there's something new-to-me in the soup department, I make it according to the recipe the first time then I'm off and running in the self-designed direction.

Take today, for example. I started with three links of turkey sausage with sundried tomatoes. I parboiled them while raiding the fridge for items that needed to be used up (one sweet potato, for example) or the staples of nearly every soup in this house—onions, celery and green peppers.

I added a small cache of Swiss chard that I froze from my garden in the summer (chopped while in a semi-frozen state), some cutup cherry tomatoes (also frozen from my gardens), a can of diced tomatoes, a half-cup each of lentils and rice then some garlic, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin and three chicken bullion cubes.

One of my latest cooking discoveries is adding all of the spices to a dish before I put it on the stove to cook. I've been doing this with chili and soups lately and for some reason I don't understand—unless it's me putting in more spice at leisure because I'm not in danger of steaming my hand—everything is tastier. Usually the last of the chili sits in the fridge for a while and may even be thrown out. But not since I started adding spices while the dish is totally uncooked.

When you think about it, none of us would eat some of the the items I listed uncooked. Lentils? Rice? And separately, this group would taste nothing like what they will once they are transformed into soup.

Soup is one of my very best favorite meals. It never tastes quite the same each time, warms your insides like nothing else and the leftovers make a nice addition to our freezer for one of those days when no one has time to cook.

Powerful stuff, heat and water.

Gosh, I'm hungry. Gotta go.

Healing and Dealing

This is the last quilt I ever made for my Mom. It's fairly small, about the size of a large bath towel. The blocks were left over from a quilt I made for Teach Yourself Visually Quilting. They're in pinks and purples, her favorite colors.

During the last two months of her life, this quilt was with her every day. Sometimes it just lay folded beside her pillow. Sometimes it lay across her knees, sometimes her shoulders. Sometimes she held it close to her face in her hands, like a child with a banky.

It is buried with her.

A few days before Mom died, my brother Mark and sister Heidi and I were enjoying some food together and talking. Mark happened to be leafing through an AARP newsletter and saw a notice from the National Arthritis Foundation asking for donations of small quilts (this size is most often referred to as a "lap quilt").

"Son," my brother said, "why don't you see if there's a way you can do this same thing for Parkinson's patients." Our Mom was diagnosed with Parkinsonian syndrome. Her hands shook so bad that she could barely eat, couldn't enjoy her crafts, couldn't write, had a very difficult time manipulating the oversized buttons on the remote for her TV. You get the idea.

When I got back home, I searched online to see if there was any type of organized effort to do just what my brother suggested. I didn't find anything.

Then yesterday, our local newspaper had a story about a Center for Aging connected to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. There, in one of the pictures, was a woman whose title is "head of the Parkinsons Center."

I emailed her—her name is Diane—and explained my idea. She wrote back immediately and very, very enthusiastically, inviting me to participate in the Parkinsons Center's first annual Christmas lunch to talk about Mom and my idea.

This feels right. This feels as though Mom guided me here. My feet have found the beginnings of a path.

I'm going to the lunch. It will be interesting to see where this takes me.

Because It's Clean

My husband recently re-watched (most of) the movie Lawrence of Arabia. I say "most of" because he fast forwarded through many of the great sweeping segments that the director used to showcase the then-new technology called Panavision.

Anyway, I didn't need to watch myself to be reminded of one the best quotes in it. There's a reporter on the scene toward the end of the film who asks Peter O'Toole (the actor playing Lawrence) why he loves the desert.

"Because it's clean," he replies.

At this time of year—the tween weeks between foliage and snow-that-sticks-to-the-ground—the forest is clean in the same way you can view a desert. Now I can see the way tree trunks curve, notice the twigginess of honeysuckle or the changing coloration of a dying tree.

This photograph is from one of my favorite trees on our path. It's a box elder. For those unfamiliar with this tree, let me describe its place in the ecosystem around here.

Box elders are actually part of the maple family of trees with leaves shaped much the same. They love wet places so river banks are ideal. Once rooted—and they do that with abandon—they are impossible to get out of the ground.

Around here, no box elder grows to more than 18 inches or so in diameter without getting topped by the wind or uprooting itself if the ground gets too wet for too long. But here's what fascinates me so much. These trees do not die. A trunk lying on the ground, looking destroyed for all intents and purposes, will sprout a host of new branches until it looks like a shrub.

Trees that lose their tops to twisting winds sprout new branches on the remaining trunk. Often the tops don't come off completely but rest on the ground, creating arches for grapevines and Indian cucumber.

This particular tree lost its top long before we moved here. Its base has a large knee that's covered by a luxurious carpet of moss. There are small branches sprouting from the trunk but close to the remaining top, woodpeckers have carved a condo community of holes. Its bark is being slowly sloughed off, revealing this magnificent coloration underneath.

We wouldn't notice this during the leafy seasons but now that the woods are clean, we can appreciate the bones that lie beneath.

Beach Glass

During the summer, we spend a lot of time walking around on the rocks and gravel banks down by the river. We pick up stones. We check out the plants. And I collect beach glass.

Most of it, as you can imagine, is either clear, green or brown. But every once in a while, there are bits of blue or pieces of ceramic that could have been a vase or a pretty jar.

No matter, I pocket them all.

I've never had a clear goal for this booty but have toyed with this idea or that, some way to use it in something special. The other day, searching about for way to make a cool candle (getting into the mode of celebrating the Solstice, don't you know), I decided to use the green and clear glass bits to create a light that reminds me of luminaria.

I found a rectangular, clear vase that once contained flowers and a votive candle in a glass holder. I put the biggest piece of green glass in the bottom of the vase—it's from some long-ago soda bottle—rested the candle on that then filled the rest of the vase with my beach glass.

The result, which you can see below, glows nicely while lit, just like one of my beloved luminaria.

Getting Scrappy

A lot of folks think of quilting as something relatively new. It often gets associated with hard times when women had to use up every scrap of cloth they had, stitching bits and pieces together to make something new out of something old.

But that's simply not true. Quilting as a craft and an art has a history as old as knitting. Examples of quilted textiles were recorded in Egyptian carvings and on the altars of temples along the Silk Road, that most ancient of trade routes.

The act of quilting is the sewing together of two layers of fabric with a third insulating layer in between. That insulating layers was most often wool in the past but now can be anything from spun plastic (better known as polyester batting) or cotton, sometimes a combination of the two together.

The using-up-scraps idea reaches back to the mid-19th century when the Industrial Revolution took weaving from the home and put it into the factory. In fact, the mass creation of cloth was one of the first mechanized manufacturing processes.

Then in the 1840s, several inventors contributed to the development of the home sewing machine. Now instead of wielding a needle and thread by hand, women could and did stitch their family's clothing on their new machines.

And when you cut pieces of cloth into the shapes you need for clothing, you make scrap. And handy women everywhere, particularly in the U.S., starting stitching those scraps together into patterns (blocks) and then stitched the blocks together. The result is called patchwork, for obvious reasons.

Nowadays, fabric designed and woven especially for quilting is everywhere. But the desire to use up scraps is still very much a part of the DNA of quilters. After I finished by first how-to quilt book, TEACH YOURSELF VISUALLY QUILTING, I had tons of single blocks and scraps left over.

And that use-it-up, don't-waste it philosophy is as much a part of me as my fingerprints. So my first how-to in my Marcia series (dedicated to my Mom) tackles the subject of using up scrap in usual and not-so-usual ways.

This block is the start of the first piece in this series.

And a new book is born.

What fun.

A Dose of Green on a Gray Day

It's been a gray, twilight kind of day so I need green. I figured you did too. These aquatic flowers grew along the edge of Spectacle Pond in Enfield, NH where we kayaked in early August.

A green bean blossom in my garden in July.

Bindweed in bloom along the river in July.

Ruby Red Swiss chard in my garden in August

Dames rockets in bloom along our path in May. They were absolutely spectacular this spring.

Green beans ready to harvest in my garden in July.

Water lilies on Lake Ninevah in August.