Web Site Review: KnitNet

I'm going to put the knit design series on hold for a few weeks while I regroup and review the web sites I've selected as the Top Five sites for spinning and knitting on the Internet.

The first site is KnitNet, a quarterly on-line magazine edited by Sharon Airhart, with Sally Melville as creative director.

The site is well-designed and pleasant to use. The photos come up fast, and when you click on a photo for details, there's a clear warning that the detailed pictures may take a minute. I appreciate that. There is no obtrusive - i.e., flashing or moving - advertising and not too many perplexing frames. And there are two intuitive ways to navigate the site - page by page with the big arrows on top of the screen, or through links to the different sections from the table of contents. It's very much like a print magazine, but unlike the print magazine, it's free.

The heart of this site is the collection of top-notch designer patterns, and there are eight patterns in the current issue. I want to knit most of them - Nancy Bush's shawl, Kim Brody Salazar's charming baby book, Marlena de Leskie's Shannon Tunic [note the straight bottom edge on this one], and more. The feature articles are good, too, including a review of mitten books, a thoughtful article on creativity by Sally Melville, and an article and surprise pattern by one of my favorite Internet knitters, Avital Pinnick.

My only gripe with the mechanics of the site is the extensive use of Adobe Acrobat for printing out patterns and charts. I understand, though, that KnitNet is going to make a print version of their patterns available soon.

If you have problems printing out the patterns using Adobe Acrobat, try this method in Netscape: Go to the page with the pattern instructions on it, click your mouse in the area where the pattern is (you won't see a cursor, but don't worry about it), then go to your menu:

Click on File/Save Frame As. You'll get a box where you can give the file a name (my copy of Tasha's Shawl named itself shawl2r.htm, which was fine with me, and deposited itself on my desktop. You can then open that file and File/Print from the Netscape window.

KnitNet is an intelligent and creative site, well worth lingering over and revisiting. I'm fond of it, and I think you will be, too.

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