My favorite LYS, Far North Yarn Company, had a blowout sale for solstice (this is a big deal in Alaska), that carried on until yesterday.  A major feature of the sale was $1 magazines and $5 books.  Guys, every knitting book in the store was $5!  So I stocked up.

While the owner was ringing up my purchases, I asked why the big book sale? This was on all her books, mind you, and she took quite a hit on some of them.  She said she is thinking about moving gradually toward eventually not having any books at all in the store, thus clearing up more space and more store resources for having more yarn and tools.  She said that for people who do want pattern books, there is always Amazon and B&N, which can offer more selection and better prices than she can.  Also, a lot of people don’t want pattern books any more.  She thinks there will always be some level of patterns in the store from the yarn companies and so on, but not the racks of books there are right now.

I have been thinking about what she said, and she is right.  For my part, when I do buy new knitting books, I mostly get them from Amazon, and the vast majority of my patterns are not from books.  I mostly get things digitally on Ravelry.  Going to the pattern search there lets me look for exactly what I want to make.  On the other hand, you miss out on the happy surprise you get while you are flipping through a book and find something just amazing that you wouldn’t have thought to look for.  So there are good and bad points about all of these pattern acquisition methods.

How do you mostly get patterns?  Online? Magazines?  Pattern books?