The Luck of the Irish

I found this video through Knitters Review (on whose forum I also found my Knit Night friends).



Very clever!

What is an Etsy shop, you ask? I think the simplest explanation is that you can buy and sell anything on eBay, but Etsy is a marketplace for handcrafted goods. Our friend the gifted woodworker has a link to an Etsy shop on his blog; so does his beloved wife, where she sells handknit items.

I am not sure if I want to knit up an inventory of doll clothing and periodically list it on Etsy, or if I want to sell PDF's of my knitwear designs. Possibly both. I am reasonably sure that I do not want to take commissions for my work, having done that in the past. Inventory + listing means that I can work at a comfortable pace and not over-promise. The idea is to reduce my overall stress level, not increase it.

I don't know if you girls remember one particularly horrible week when your father was in school. It was when we were eating oatmeal two and three times a day, just to get full, and I was sewing 20-hour days because we needed the cash so badly. Not looking for a repeat of that! Thankfully, my cash flow has improved significantly since those thrilling days of yesteryear, and I am looking for reasonable ways to speed up the payoff of my debt, not desperately working for my daily bread.

I remember when I was sewing uniforms for the local girls’ choir, and one of my customers was the Relief Society president in our ward. I called to tell her that her girls’ uniforms were done, and she said something like, “Great! I’ll swing by tomorrow and pick them up.” At which point I swallowed my pride and told her, “I need you to come get them today. That’s our dinner tonight.” She came within the hour, bringing cash, paying me extra (which embarrassed me to no end), and bringing a bag of groceries.

I am so thankful for the job I love, for regular income and enough to live on, for my 401K contributions and my emergency fund and my efforts toward having a year’s supply of necessities. I am thankful to live in relative dignity, and not in genteel poverty. I have had enough of the latter to last a lifetime, but I have learned valuable lessons from it, and I hope that I am more compassionate because of it than I would have been inclined to be, otherwise.

That luck of the Irish? I won 2 hours off during our support staff meeting yesterday. The blessings just keep rolling in...