"You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone" - knitting version

[firecat]

Early in my knitting career I learned that if I liked a pattern on the web I should save a copy to my hard disk or else the pattern might go bye-bye and I might not be able to find it again. This happened with a pattern I really wanted to knit called the DNA scarf. (I later did find a copy - I don't remember if someone sent it to me, or if someone told me where it had moved to.)

Since then I have used my Mac's lovely "print to PDF" feature to save copies of a lot of knitting patterns.

And then along came Ravelry, which lets you save a link to a pattern in your account. I've been somewhat seduced by the ease of doing that (you can put a button on your browser toolbar to do it) although I still make PDFs of most patterns too.

Apparently today the magknits.com web site (a free online monthly webzine with knitting patterns) went bye-bye. A lot of people on Ravelry are upset that patterns they had put into their Ravelry queues are no longer available.

Which reminds me, I need to make sure I have PDFs of the patterns in my Ravelry queue.