This Carding Chronicle started years ago as a contribution to my quilt guild’s January newsletter. It has morphed and changed since then but I believe its virtue remains the same: A resolve to use up what I have.

But as we all know, temptation is abroad in the land.

Thanks for being here. Thanks for subscribing and sharing your time with my books and stories.

I am wishing all of you a very happy and peaceful New Year.

January 1, 2019: I resolve not* to buy or bring home any new books, fabric, paper, paints, yarn, pens or markers this year. I will read or use only what I have in my stash when the urge to create comes upon me.

*Exceptions:

• Really pretty fabric that some nefarious quilting friend puts on the free table at a guild meeting. You know the kind I mean, something that’s a batik or a leaf print (I love leaf prints) or has sparkly thread.
• Yarn in a luscious shade of orange that I find at the Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival that’s held every autumn at the Tunbridge Fairgrounds.
• Cool embroidery kits that I discover during the Vermont Shop Hop that I know will get sold out quickly if I don’t buy them now. This is especially true when I am encouraged to think this way by the friends fellow enablers that I’m Shop Hopping with.
• A brand new type of pen for which I have an extraordinary coupon from Post in White River Junction, Vermont. (The coolest card and drawing supply store in the Upper Valley, in my opinion.)
• Fabric that I find at a summer stash buster sale put on by a guild member fellow enabler who’s priced everything so low, it’s almost free.
• A new sketchbook with a cover that’s a painting by Georgia O’Keefe or a Celtic design because O’Keefe is one of my all-time favorites and I love Celtic anything.
• Or when Michaels sends me an irresistible coupon for stamp pads or acrylic paint or colored pencils or something else I don’t have.
• Or when one of my favorite authors brings out a new work and I know I want to add it to my carefully curated collection of books so why wait?

January 1, 2020: I resolve not* to buy or bring home any new books, fabric, paper, paints, yarn, pens or markers this year because I have run out of space in my desk drawers and stash cabinet and my husband says he’s not building me any more bookshelves.

* Exceptions may apply.

You can visit Carding any time in my novels, The Road Unsalted, Thieves of Fire, and The Dazzling Uncertainty of Life. The fourth in the series, Lights in Water, Dancing, has just been published! You can find them all on Amazon or you can order them through your local independent book store.

You can subscribe to the Carding Chronicles by clicking the button on my home page. When you do, my stories speed from my keyboard to your inbox every Thursday without any further effort on your part.

If you’d like to get in touch, my email address is: Sonja@SonjaHakala.com.