Simmertime

On our first kayaking trip of the season, we traveled to
Grafton Pond to hang out with the loons.
You can hang out more with me at my website www.SonjaHakala.com

One of these days, I have to look up the proper name for this
wonderful water plant. I love the shape of this leaf, and
am thinking about using it for an applique quilt.

My husband Jay with his little kayaking companion,
our little girl Goldie.

No matter how many times we walk along the river,
we seem to find new plants. This is
a swamp milkweed just before its flowers
burst open.

July-Oh My!

These beautiful trumpets of pinkish white are bindweed. There are always more pictures at
my website: www.SonjaHakala.com

The Blackeyed Susans are in bloom early this year.

Deadly nightshade has blossoms like the tomato plant.

And we have more milkweed than we ever have had.
More monarch butterflies!

Falling Up

Goldie is the queen of silly in our house. And silly is part and parcel of
Shel Silverstein's work, Falling Up. Check out one
of his poems today at the InkPatch at www.SonjaHakala.com

These double-blossomed pink columbine hover above the bachelor buttons in my garden.

They came, they bloomed and now these incredibly luscious peonies are already by.
Too short, too short.

A Whole of Birthin' Going On

This baby brown creeper just fledged today!
Read all about his first flight—and rescue—on my website: www.SonjaHakala.com

I know it doesn't look like much now but
these frog eggs just hatched yesteday. The polywogs
will be easily seen very soon!

This is the second year we've been privileged to have
a nesting pair of Canada geese nearby.
This is Mom and Dad and four goslings
out for an early evening swim.

A Rebirth Announcement

Remember, you are welcome to check in every day on the InkBlog at: www.SonjaHakala.com. I always have new pictures and news to share with you.

Last week, just after I posted here last, the Cecropia moth caterpillar that we nicknamed Spiky, whom we watched spin a cocoon in September, came out as this incredibly beautiful moth.

Cecropia moths are the largest moths in North America, and we were in awe of its incredible beauty and the fact that it made it through this past winter.

Just for reference, here's what Spiky (or maybe it's Spiketta, we have no way of knowing) looked like when Jay found him/her.

It's Spring at the InkBlog!

Hi folks,

I took the camera around to my gardens yesterday and took some pix of the flowers that are in bloom or just coming into bloom, like this lilac.

Truly, this almost makes my mouth water. I just LOVE these colors.

I spent the weekend taking quilting classes from this wonderful art quilter, Sarah Ann Smith. Had a blast and learned tons.

I'm blogging every day on my personal website and I've set it up so you can subscribe and get it delivered to your inbox every day. No muss, no fuss.

Come visit at: www.SonjaHakala.com

Joy Returns! One Year of Blogging Today

It is so hard for me to believe that it was a year ago today that I sat here and wrote on this blog for the first time.

At that moment, I have to admit that blogging was the least important item on my list of things to do this past year. Now I know it was the most important decision I made.

You see, I've been a writer for a long time. I've written a lot for other people—through newspapers, magazines, book publishers, and other commercial clients along the way.

But when it came to writing for myself, I honestly felt I had nothing to say any more. When contemplating a book idea here or there, I felt empty. And when I started this blog, I was seriously considering what else I would like to do that did not involve writing.

A frightening thought because writing has always been akin to breathing for me.

My first few blog posts were a lot like pulling my own teeth. I realize now that I was feeling quite "formal" about the whole process. But once I relaxed and decided that this space is really for me—though I'm always glad to have company—I wrote whatever I wanted to write.

And that made all the difference.

This blog became a practice in priming the pump. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I realize I had become bored with what other folks wanted me to write. It had been sooooooooo long since I wrote purely for the joy of writing that I had forgotten what that felt like.

Now I remember.

As a consequence, I'm close to done with a first draft of a new novel that I really like. I finished Your Book, Your Way, a project I've wanted to complete for years. I have 363 posts on this blog, and plan to use the best of them, augmented by my log book for the year, in a book that I plan to do on Blurb. (Probably only print one copy just for me.) And I have two versions of my Nellie Bly mystery, called Exposure, to integrate so that it can be published next month. And I founded a non-profit to bring handmade quilts to people with Parkinson's disease.

I lost my Mom, an ache that's eased but will never go away. But we became best friends in the last years of her life, a fact I treasure more than my words can express.

My family weathered a difficult winter in more ways than one. But the Canada geese are honking outside my window this morning, and I got some beautiful fabrics to play with from my husband and my son will make my favorite barbecued chicken for supper tonight and he baked me my favorite cookies last night. (I'm not much of a person for cake.)

So a new year begins for me, and I am so grateful for the one just completed.

My daily blogging focus is shifting to the Inkblog on my personal website: www.SonjaHakala.com. I will welcome your company there.

But I promise to come visit the Power of 60 at least once a week.

I like this place a lot.

This Proof Is Not in the Pudding

I finally, finally, finally approved the proof of Your Book, Your Way yesterday. And there are 50 copies now on their way to me!!!

Today is going to be a busy one, writing letters to all of the wonderful, key folks who have agreed to read and review the book for me on Amazon, where I hope it will appear by this time next week—or so.

I also gave my first newspaper interview about the book yesterday afternoon for the Valley Business Journal, which was great fun. I've known the reporter, Kim Gifford, for some time. She took one of my workshops a couple of years ago, and we've stayed in touch.

Because of the interview, I needed an author picture so Jay took out his camera last night and snapped a few. We both like this one a lot.

What do you think?

I am still having so much fun writing this blog that I don't want to stop though I think I will cut myself some slack and not push to write every day, at least not here. Does that mean I will have to change the title to the Power of 61?

In the meantime, you can always come visit me at www.SonjaHakala.com

Click on the link to the InkBlog.

What Do You Do on a Rainy Day?

You make a Bling Bag!
I started with two fabrics and pieced them together to make an 8 x 20 inch piece.

I cut two pieces of fabric 4 x 8 inches, put them right sides together, put two
pieces of cord in loops so they get sewn into the seam, sewed them together
then turned them right side out.

Position flap at one end of the piece, leaving at least one-quarter inch
of fabric beyond the flap.

Cut a piece 8 x 20 that will be the lining of your bling bag.
Putting right sides together, sew the top of the lining and the top of the exterior piece to one
another, including the flap. This picture was taken
after I sewed the seam then pressed it open.

Fold the bag in half, right sides together. Sew the bottom and the side seam.
Do not sew the two sides of the lining together yet. Notice that I drew
a curve in each of the corners at the bottom. I used the
top of a can I use to store plastic bags, tracing it
with a chalk pencil. I then followed this
line when I sewed the seam on the bottom.

Turn the bag right side out. Turn the raw edge
of the lining in about a half inch. Sew it closed.
Push the lining into the bag.
Press.

Add buttons to the front, making sure they are placed where
the loops can get around them.
Voila! Bling bag.

The Human Condition Is One of Yearning

I just finished The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama the other day. It's been on my shelf for a couple of years now, chosen from thousands of other novels at the Five Colleges Book Sale because I loved the cover.

This is a wonderful book, told in rather spare prose. A young Chinese man, suffering from tuberculosis, is sent to live on the Japanese seaside in a cottage built by his grandfather so that he can recover his health.

It's 1938 and the Japanese have invaded China, brutalizing the people and the countryside.

But in the village of Tarumi, drama is understated and the war, at first, a quiet voice heard on the radio from time to time.

To me, the whole book is about human yearnings—for health, for love, for beauty, for courage, for peace and harmony. I've long thought that yearning is probably the most powerful of all human emotions because it's part of all the others. When you love, you yearn for emotional and physical contact. If you hate, you yearn to dominate or destroy your enemy. Anger, to me, is a yearning to control. Desire is yearning with a different name.

Uncontrolled yearning becomes lust—for power, for sex, for money, for dominance. Acknowledged yearning is the quiet wail of a saxophone heard in the dark, a piercing of the heart, a connection.

This was a good book, a novel that's more contemplation than action (though lots of things happen), my preferred mode as I turn toward my next year.

My Quilting Universe Expands Again

The more I learn, the more I learn. Isn't that cool?

I've known about the Vermont state quilt guild for a couple of years, and even joined last year. But then my Mom's needs outweighed all the other considerations in my life so I never attended either meeting last year. (There are only two.) So today was my first time ever at the Green Mountain Quilt Guild.

First off, I was floored to learn how many guilds there are in the state. Just amazing for such a small place.

Second, I got the chance to stand up and talk about the Parkinson's Quilt Project for a few minutes, and brought a lot of brochures with me in a stand that Jay set up for me. They were nearly all gone when I left. Plus, one of the vendors who owns a shop in Northfield took a large number of them to have on the counter of her store. And one of the other attendees came up to me to say that she makes small, scrappy quilts and would send some of them to me if I would give her the address.

Warm, gushy feelings all over.

And this little flower block you see here was my contribution to the block raffle for this meeting. I won the whole pile of blocks, the first time ever that I've done that.

So now I have nearly enough blocks for a very pretty spring quilt.

Mom's watching out for me. I can feel it.

It's Called Squirrel Corn

I cannot believe that I went to bed last night and did not remember to write my blog!! Still, I will wind up my year of celebrating my 60th birthday by writing here for 362 days (or thereabouts).

I thought I would get back to the flower blog I posted the other day when I did not know what this particular ephemeral was called. Come to find out, its seeds resemble corn kernels so it's referred to, commonly, as squirrel corn.

And ephemeral is a key word here. These little beauties, as well as the Dutchman's breeches, are already by. Some of the violets are fading though I know they will keep blooming over the summer though not in such profusion.

And the little bluets and the daffodils and narcissus are gone as well. But I can see the snow-in-summer and purple columbine and the lilacs and the crabapple ready to bust open any moment now!

I also found part of a robin's egg shell on the ground as Goldie and I returned from our walk. Hard to believe that the first babies are hatched already.

Everyone always describes spring as this soft season but it's really a hard charger!

Just five days to go until I fall back to once a week. But I am so glad I decided to do this. Through this blog, I have learned to enjoy writing again. That was the best gift I gave myself this past year.

Making a Beautiful Swan

Back in December, my quilt guild did this really crazy fabric swap where everyone brought a half yard of what they considered a really ugly fabric, something that got into their stash who knows how.

We all have those "what was I thinking" pieces of cloth.

Everyone stood around in a circle, tore a strip of fabric off their piece and then passed that to the next person in line. And so on and so on until everyone had a little bit of everyone else's really ugly fabric.

OK, now you've got a lot of design challenges out there among folks who love design challenges.

So for the past few months, during show and tell, these phenomenal quilts made of "ugly" fabric have waltzed into our lives.

Now there's another truism in quilting that no matter what kind of fabric you have, if you cut it small enough, you turn it into something interesting. Not only that, you can sew anything to anything else and it works if the pieces are small enough.

Last night, one of my guild members brought this little sweetie to me as a donation for the Parkinson's Quilt Project. It was made—of ugly fabrics—by Ruth Ann Wheeler. It's done in a slight variation of a Log Cabin with a larger center/starter square (4 inches) with all the rest of the logs cut at 2 1/2 inches.

Lovely, isn't it? A beautiful swan indeed.

The Devil in the Details

Every year in Vermont, volunteers from all over the state take some time to grab one of these bright green bags, and fill it with trash collected from our state's roadsides.

GreenUp Day was this past Saturday, and I filled these three bags with trash from our road frontage as well as down the bank where, when people throw their garbage, they figure it disappears, and also along the river where the ice out left quite a bit of broken glass.

And I am here to tell you that judging by what they leave behind, cigarette smokers and Budweiser beer drinkers are the skankiest folks on the roads. I picked up more butts and those horrifically designed red, white and blue cans than anything else.

It's hard for me to believe that I ever smoked. But I did. For twelve years before I quit 33 years ago. I shake my head as I write this because it feels as though that was another person.

But I have never liked Budweiser. And now I have even more reason not to like the King of (Skanky) beers.

Yucko.

The Universe Is Small

I was over on the coast of New Hampshire today to visit a Pfaff sewing machine dealer who fixed one of my machines and serviced the other.

While out there, I visited three quilt shops (including the Pfaff dealer) got a chance to visit with some really terrific people in each location.

And I brought in my books, Teach Yourself Visually Quilting definitely among them.

When I got home, I was making a list of things to do for the rest of the week, and contacting the acquiring editor that I worked with at Wiley (the publisher of two of my books) was near the top.

I remembered that I hadn't blogged today—here—so I turned on my computer, and there was an email from this same acquiring editor!!

You have to understand, there's no reason for us to correspond a lot because the book is out, etc., so this was such a strange coincidence.

Oh yes, the universe is small—and delightful.

Ten Days to Go!

I find it difficult to believe that it is only ten more days and I will have been blogging here for a full year. I'm shaking my head, trying to remember back to last May when I started this blog.

I'm going to spend the last ten days ruminating, if you will. And then, on my birthday, I will drop down to just a weekly post here, a roundup with pictures and captions.

When I started out, I had an ambitious agenda for reading 60 books during the course of the year. I think I will end up at that point in terms of the amount of reading I've done this year but as far as individual titles, I'll be in the 40s somewhere.

I find that paying attention to where I spend my reading time has pushed me to clear my shelves of books that, really, I'll never pick up, volumes that have taken up valuable space for too long.

As I've noted previously, I now assiduously avoid books with gratuitous violence in them or those that, like way too much of contemporary American fiction, are all plot and no action. In other words, they're all about what happens and not who it happens to.

I've discovered a real partiality for Canadian authors as well as the Brits that seem to be my natural reading allies. That's been en eye-opener! And I keep pushing myself to understand why. It's not that I purposely avoid American fiction but that not much of it suits me. I mean—Jams Patterson? Stephen King? John Grisham? And Sue Grafton's tiring alphabet books or the extraordinarily tedious Jodi Picoult?

Nope, no thanks. I want to know and enjoy the people in my books.

Which brings me to this little biography of Jane Austen by Carol Shields, a Canadian author. As much as I cherish Jane, I've never read a bio of her. This one is a little different, looking at the author's life in terms of her work as a novelist. It's pretty short and a good read. Made me think about my own work as a writer, about how routine is important because you need space for contemplation. And how society—not too much—is equally important.

I think that may explain why I get so off course when there's chaos in the house. Jay's been putting down flooring in our upstairs so the furniture and some of our cabinets have been arranged and rearranged for two weeks now. And it really puts me off kilter.

Glad it's almost done.

The Clematis Project

The flowering vine known as clematis is renowned for its dislike of being transplanted. I bought one from a local garden center that specializes in trees and shrubs years ago, when we still had planter boxes with trellis work in our front yard.

It was going to grace those trellis boxes.

But last year, the decayed state of the boxes meant they had to go which left my poor clematis—which finally bloomed for the first time—with nothing to climb.

Jay and I hurriedly stuck a cut maple sapling in the ground but the wind and rain kept pushing it to the ground.

Last fall, I laid the vine-entwined sapling on the ground, vowing to take care of it this spring.

So today, I resurrected the clematis—and added a little fabric for more color. I think this is sturdy enough to do the job yet airy enough to let the wind blow through.

Close-up below.

And Mom, I miss you, more than my poor words can express.

Spring Things in Pictures

It's a beautiful day in May so I was out taking pictures this afternoon.
I just recently caught sight of these flowers along the steps down to the river.
At first, I took them for Dutchman's breeches but the bloom is nothing
like that flower, which you can see for yourself just below.
It looks like a white bleeding heart. I've gotta look this one up.

This is the Dutchman's breeches which I've grown to love so much since we came to live here.
I've been trying for years to get a good picture of these unusual flowers.
And today, I got three of them.

I planted a number of grape hyacinth around my yard years ago
and keep spreading them out. Love this plant.

My lilacs are getting ready to bloom. A friend in my quilt guild told me how to
prune these shrubs properly, which I will do this fall. Love the smell of these.

To me, the daffodil and narcissus season never lasts long enough.
These narcissus with the peach-colored centers are always the last to bloom. Lovely, aren't they?

I've been in love with violets all my life but never saw them this color until we moved here.
I've picked these out of the ground and spread them everywhere.

The family viola always has such charming faces. I hate to cut the grass when they are in bloom.

My guiding rule on mowing is that I don't do it until I can't see
Goldie in the grass. Things are growing so fast,
that may be sooner than I anticipated.

Your Book, Your Way Is at the Printer!

A major achievement today.

My opus on the various methods of publishing a book—and how to choose the best one—went to the printer today!!!

Your Book, Your Way is finally done.

I need a glass of wine.

Whew.

Cactus Flower

Oh no, it's that book. . . again.

Yes, because of changes, I am working my way through Your Book, Your Way one last time. Jay had several good suggestions, one of which became a last six-page chapter so I printed the whole thing out again and have read up to page 157 today.

And found some stuff that needed fixing and some places where, I hope, I made things more clear. And when I get to the end of it tomorrow, I am uploading to the printer and not looking back.

In the meantime, looking at this incredible bloom on my Easter cactus is a lovely diversion.

Anne and Her Frederick

Today would have been my Dad's 85th birthday.

Sunday is my first Mother's Day without Mom.

Yesterday I went into a card store to get missives for my sister, two of my sisters-in-law, and an aunt and nearly broke down in sobs because I could not buy a card for my Mom.

Stressful day.

So I needed a Jane fix. And not just any Jane Austen novel but my favorite, Persuasion.


I still remember the first time I read this book, taking an old copy from the Howe Library in Hanover. The book was tiny, a mere 5 x 8 with a hardcover and type probably only in the 10 point range.

This book, Jane Austen's last novel, is shorter than her more famous creations, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. And in that size, I could hold the book in one hand while laying on my side in bed to read.

I'm not absolutely sure why this one is my favorite except that it has a poignancy that her other books don't have. Anne, our heroine, is older than Jane's other leading ladies—not as sharp-tongued as Elizabeth Bennett, not as openly passionate as Marianne Dashwood but definitely as reserved and as sensible at Marianne's sister Elinor.

Maybe it's because Anne, in so many ways, is so alone in her own family and I feel for her loneliness. Or maybe it's because I love to laugh at Anne's father and sister Elizabeth who are so fooled when Anne is so clear-eyed.

Or maybe it's just that everything comes so right in the end.

In any case, Persuasion is my great comfort food of a book. And while I'm missing my Mom and Dad so much, it's nice to let Jane take care of my heart for a while. Because, in the end, Anne will reunite with her Frederick and the world will be right as rain again.

The River Giveth and the River Taketh Away

Just spent some time down on the land, walking our old path and marveling, yet again, at the destruction wrought by the icy rampage of late February.

This picture is just a tiny, tiny taste of the land we lost as the ice gouged a new width to its channel. Over at our swimming rocks, the land has been sheered away so dramatically, we're not even sure we can get down to them at all. We may, for all intents and purposes, be cut off from the river this summer.

At the very least, we're looking at clambering up and down a ladder to get to the water where we once used to hop from the bank to the stone.

And yet there are signs of some hope that we may regain some of what we've lost though it will be in the river's own good time before we'll know for sure. The ice that took away our access to the water also brought down a sizable chunk of the concrete foundation of what was once a roller skating rink on our property. A couple of trees came down as well, their roots still anchored in the bank.

Since then, debris has collected there, and that is the hopeful sign.

You see, we've watched this before upstream where two trees—box elders—went over the bank but kept their roots in the ground. Within a year, they each strained tons of silt from the water, creating new land that is now attached to the riverbank. This land is now covered with willow and cattails and other plants. In the summer, the growth is so thick, it's just about impossible to walk there.

So that is the hope, that the concrete and trees start a new cycle of rebuilding. But like I said, that process is done on river time.

The Seven Sisters

I have long been in love with this group of seven trees, Eastern cottonwoods, that stand together on the side of our path near the river. I named them the seven sisters because of the way they live together, separate but sharing.

When I take a walk when it's windy, you can hear them talking with one another, checking in to see how everyone is faring. Even though some have a greater girth than the others, their equal height and the arms they raise to the skies speak to me of a bond that I find among the women I care about and who take care of me.

Yesterday, they bathed in the sky, letting their hair down, so to speak, their faces turned to one another. "Wow, amazing winter, wasn't it?" one says.

"One of the coldest I ever remember," another says. "Nearly froze my sap off."

When Jay and I lived in Houston, Texas for a couple of long years, I discovered that my greatest longing was for the trees of home. I've played among the trees my whole life, read books while resting in their branches, leaned against them in sorrow, watched their leaves tell me that the weather was going to change. To me, they are a comfort, goddesses that let me walk among them.

Just like my women friends.

Last Remnant of the Recent Ice Age

Yesterday, I took a quick look at the date on which I took pictures (see below) of this ice chunk when Jay, Goldie and I took our first walk after our dramatic ice out. It was April 10.

Now, just a short 20 days later, this small, dirt-encrusted chunk of ice is the last bit left on our land. And the whole world is turning green in response to the sun.

Zap! Pow! Our recent ice age, which seemed to go on forever, is over.

What's interesting to behold is how the ice sculpted and shaped our land as it rampaged out of here on February 27. For example, the land that adjoins our swimming rocks is now a vertical drop of at least seven feet. At this point, we cannot walk out there without rappelling down this vertical face. No, I'm not kidding.

In some places, the ice smoothed the river bank, forming the gradual slopes that seem to be its preferred angle of repose. A few trees dropped over the side. Others are perilously close.

And where the ice moved in to stay until it melted, there are small piles of stones, a reminder of how the hills of my beloved Vermont came into being.

Lady Nature is always willing to teach those with eyes to see.

May Day. Beltane. A time to celebrate the a return to milder times, at least weatherwise.

These ice sheets lay across the rocks from our house on April 11.
There were completely gone two weeks later.

This is a picture of the same ice chunk above, taken
on April 10, twenty days ago.

All of this white stuff, taken on April 12, is now long gone.
I'm counting the days until I have to mow the lawn the first time.