When is a free pattern not free?

There are several of my patterns (little witch, ballerina, 3D chicken, 3D raccoon, 3D cat, 3D dog, & 3D sheep) available on Chinese owned forums as “free patterns" – all without my permission. Needless to say I’m unhappy about this - for so many reasons it’s not OK to purchase patterns and post them on forums for others to use. It's illegal, and it deprives designers of their livelihood, + it’s totally demoralising.
 4Crafter.com & pindiyI’m amazed that some people can respect a designer’s work, but not the actual designer who works so hard to produce it for them!

This stealing has prompted me to remove some of my patterns from Bead-patterns.com in order to protect them. I now watermark them with the customer’s name, and sell at ruthkielbeadart.weebly.com. There have been no more thefts since I did this, but I feel awful about taking patterns from bead-patterns.com. 

I'm currently working on a new fish (guppy) design that I hope to put up for free (real free) at Bead-pattens.com. It's nice to use peyote stitch for fish and reptiles, as well as for mammals. I used to make fish with ladder stitch, but that now seems pretty limiting.

A new peyote snake pattern. I'm going to put this pattern up for free at my new site ruthkielbeadart.weebly.com. I just have to make another snake to test the instructions (one more time) for mistakes. I made him quite a while ago, but now I can take a fresh look at the pattern.

I should be relaxing and having a summer holiday but I can't stop beading. I have become obsessed with seahorses again, and have designed a brand new one in peyote stitch. It's not quite right yet but I know what I need to do to make it really pretty. It makes me happy just to look at it. I'm not going to put any pictures up until the pattern is finished and the design is registered.

I have lots of ideas currently and don't finish anything before branching off into something else. And I got new crystals in the mail yesterday - so beautiful!