So after you have made hats or mittens at Yarnworks and you want to move on, what now? We have a book of random patterns that I and others have made in our supplies box, but how do you find exactly what you want to do? To the internet or the library! The reference section of the Ewing library has lots of knitting and crocheting pattern books - look for the "crafts" section. If you photocopy a pattern out of one of these books, make sure you make an extra copy or scan it and save it as a pdf so that you can recover when the cat pukes on it or you leave it on a bus.
Online you'll find that pretty much every yarn company has a website with free patterns - think Lion Brand or Red Heart - if you see the yarn at Joann or Michael's, they will usually have a site. I like Lion Brand for their large number of patterns and the easy ability to sort them by yarn type or level of experience. Look down along the left side of the web page for the "Patterns" link.
Ravelry is another of my favorite sites. You have to register to use it (likewise many of the other sites), but I haven't seen any e-mail or spam from them. When you log on, look at the top of the page and click on the "patterns" tab. The best way to narrow down what you can make is to use the "pattern browser and advanced search" link just a little down the page. Say you have 300 yards of fingering weight yarn and you want a child's hat pattern. You can use that link to find exactly that, and every pattern that fits your criteria will show up. Then what? If you have selected only free patterns, you can download and print them out. The ones that have a "Free Ravelry Download" link are going to give you a neatly printable pdf file, while some links lead you to another website where printing might be a little messier. Most non-free patterns range from $1 - $6 and are easy to get with a Paypal account or other methods. What if you're not ready to choose a pattern? In the upper right you can click on "Add to Favorites" and it will store it for you. You can find it under the "my notebook" tab when you are ready.
What if you find a pattern but you don't have or want to use the kind of yarn they recommend? You need to find an equivalent yarn. Maybe the pattern was made with Madelinetosh Tosh Vintage. What the heck is that? Use Google to look up that yarn, and then look for two things: the weight (bulky, worsted, DK or sport, fingering or sock, laceweight, etc) and the yardage per skein. Say your pattern needed 3 skeins of Tosh Vintage. When you look it up you find that it says it has 200 yards per skein, so you know that you need 600 yards of something. When you look for the weight, you might have to look hard to find it, but it turns out to be worsted weight. Here is one example of what the weights mean. By looking this up you find that it's a #4 yarn. Now when you look for a substitute, you know what you need. If you wanted to substitute Vanna's Choice acrylic yarn, you can look it up and find that the solid colors have 170 yards per skein of the worsted weight, so doing the math you need 4 skeins to have enough. Make sure you get 4 of the same dye lot.
You can always just put your desired pattern wishes into Google, but what you get back will be more random and less likely to have been tested for correct directions, and I think most of us know the frustration of a bad pattern. Go forth and seek patterns!
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