If you don’t buy knitting patterns online, you don’t know what you’re missing! Many new and established designers are now making their designs available online because it is so much more convenient. If you’re still having doubts, ponder these points:
- Space. Is your house full of piles of knitting magazines and leaflets that you have to rifle through every time you want to find a pattern? Digital patterns save you the difficulty of storing and searching for your patterns when you just want to start knitting!
- Immediacy. With digital downloads, you can have the pattern you want right now. No need to wait for shipping, or pay extra for it.
- Green. Not having to print patterns out means that you’re saving paper and ink. If you knit only two patterns a month that were each five pages long, you’d save 120 pages.
- Variety. You will find much more variety when you shop for patterns online than at your local yarn store, or in print magazines.
- Clarity. It’s true that most independent designers can’t afford technical editors, but you might be surprised at how much clearer the directions can be. Paper publications are limited in length, whereas digital patterns can take up those extra couple of pages to explain a complicated technique.
- Support. Large publications may publish errata, but they’ll rarely exchange emails with you when you need a little extra guidance. On the other hand, independent designers are usually in close touch with the knitting community, and are happy to personally respond to queries.
- Community. By purchasing from independent knitwear designers, you are directly benefiting the knitting community.