Saturday, January 29, 2011

Knitting from my iPad

My wonderful hubby gave me an iPad for Christmas, which I got after Christmas, because we we re in the midst of moving during the holiday season, alas. At any rate, I have been exploring the various functions of this marvelous device, and of course had to look at iBook app.

I stumbled upon a marvelous use this app: storing and reading knitting patterns that have been put into PDF format!

I happened to be looking for a knitting pattern online, and because it was in PDF format, I naturally decided to download it, as I normally would on a regular computer, not thinking whether or not it would work on the iPad. It did.

After the PDF came up on the screen, a dark grey bar briefly flashed just under the URL and Google search boxes at the top of the browser. What was that? I cautiously tapped that area just under the search bar.

The grey bar appeared again, this time with the words, "open in iBooks" just under the Google search box. Huh. Okay sure, why not? I clicked the button. All of a sudden, iBooks popped up, stuck the knitting pattern I had downloaded onto the bookshelf, and opened it up! From there, I could bookmark it if I wanted, and I also found I could create a "collection," name it "knitting patterns," select my downloaded knitting patterns and move them into that collection.

How cool is that? I can now download any knitting pattern and have easy access to it on my iPad from my IBooks app! What's great is that I don't have to squint at a small print out, I can increase the font size easily. Less clutter! Fewer pieces of paper used!

I am a happy camper. I'll have to find out if I can somehow make each pattern searchable under subcategories (socks, sweaters, etc.). For one, it'll be a great resource for decluttering and organizing my knitting patterns downloaded in PDF form.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad