My husband and I both come from poor families. Growing up, we didn't have a lot of this world's goods, but we never lacked anything that was essential. Then our parents skimped and scraped to give us those 'extras' that make childhood so happy.
Come marriage, and my hubby and I felt the call of God to spend our lives in Christian ministry and so for 21 years, we served as volunteers in two missions, without pay or superannuation, just trusting the Lord to supply all our needs. We never went without a meal, though we did have some interesting ones! And just as our parents did, God often blessed us with the 'extras' beyond our needs.
Things changed for the last ten years of our working lives, when we moved States, and the Christian organisations we worked with actually employed us, paying a salary and superannuation. This enabled us to purchase a home and pay off a mortgage and buy a reliable car.
So come retirement, we were eligible for a government pension plus a small income from our tiny superannuation. Then God blessed us again with some amazing 'extras'. For 13 years I had the joy of designing bags, wall-hangings, quilts, pincushions etc and being paid a significant amount each year by Craft magazine publishers. To have that income added to our pension meant we had enough money to do a little bit of travel and indulge in some other small luxuries.
The first rug to be pulled from under my feet was when seven of the magazines that published my work closed down and the one remaining reduced its number of issues. With less income in 2018 and little possibility of publication, there was no need to purchase lots of fabric, sewing aids or any of the amazing gadgets that keep being invented for stitchers. We were still able to live comfortably yet frugally.
I also still had an income from pattern sales on my Craftsy Store where I had nearly 200 patterns available for purchase. My patterns were in front of millions of Craftsy members who hopefully would fall in love with my designs. But ... you guessed it, the rug was pulled from under my feet two days ago. Craftsy's new owners decided to cull their 12,000 designers and 220,000 patterns. They advised me they were keeping my store as I was identified as a "top designer". However they left just 2 (yes, two) paying patterns and eight free patterns in my store!!! Of the eight free designs, three are Christmas, and four are blocks in a 12 block design! It was obviously a random, computer-generated choice of what patterns were left in stores!
So, what do you do when the rug is pulled from under your feet? Well, the first thing is to pick yourself up off the floor where you've been flung. The next thing is to turn to God who is an expert in picking up the pieces! In this situation, there is a third thing I need to do - fix up my hundreds of links to Craftsy that now do not work!
I am still thinking through how I can best sell my patterns in future. I will eventually have them all available direct from my website, but of course I would like them to be available to a much wider audience.
So I am back on my feet - just! and have plenty of work to do on my website when my Christmas visitors go home next week!
May you have many blessings in the new year.
Happy stitching!
Val