You have decided to use up some of your yarn stash to make a sweater for yourself and you have just the pattern. When you go to your stack of magazines and pattern books however you cannot find the pattern, you know it is there, but you have no idea which book or magazine has the pattern you are looking for. Sound familiar?

I have a fair amount of books, magazines and patterns that I have purchased and stored. One of the things I noticed about books, magazines and patterns is that the items within them have names that do not easily describe what they actually are. For instance, I found a lovely sweater in a book on knitted jackets that is called Dakota on the Side. The book has an index and a table of contents, but when I look at Dakota on the Side in the table of contents I have no idea if it is a short or long jacket, fitted or loose jacket, or even if it is a men’s, women’s or child’s jacket. To get around this I scan the pattern into my computer (every scanner and computer works differently, but the saving and tagging are very similar) and then save it with a name that is more descriptive and / or tag it within my PDF program with descriptive tags so that I can search my computer for it easily.

To do this, I scan the pattern, then save the pattern as a PDF, with a name that is more descriptive. For example, Women’s long jacket no buttons, might be the title. Then I find the place in the program (in Apple’s Preview program it is in Tools/Inspector) I add a keyword such as women’s cardigan, and another keyword, knit side to side, etc. Finally, I have a folder titled Knitting in my Documents section, and within the Knitting folder I have sub folders titled cardigans (which is where I’d put this jacket), hats, scarves, shawls, mittens, gloves, etc. that I file these scans into.

It may seem like a lot of work, but in the long run it has saved me a lot of time and money. Time because I just search my hard drive for pullovers and all of the patterns I have tagged with pullovers show up in my search box. Alternatively, I browse my pullover folder when I’m looking for a pullover. I have saved money because if I find the pattern I want I’m less likely to go out and purchase a duplicate. You are limited only by your filing skills and can always use aliases or shortcuts if you want to put a pattern in two folders. I also don’t scan every pattern in every book or magazine I own, only those that I’m fairly certain I like, will like in a year, or will ever want to knit. I rarely if ever like everything in every magazine or book I purchase.

Finally, a word on copyright. Without digressing into a ton of legalize, I only do this with patterns I own or with a few selected patterns from books I check out of the library. I don’t sell these patterns once I’ve scanned them. The scans I make are for my personal use only. To sell these patterns or share them with friends is a violation of the copyright laws and deprives the designers of the money they could earn from the sale of their patterns. In my keyword tags I often note where the pattern came from. That way if someone is interested I can tell where I got it from and where they can buy it if interested.