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.