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Web Site Review: Wool Works

© Suzanne Griffith

I hope you have all visited the first and the largest knitting site on the Internet: Wool Works. When I'm looking for online knitting information, the Wool Works links page is the first place I check -- there are 304 online yarn vendors listed, for example, along with links to spinning, fiber, and lots of other fiber arts related categories.

Emily Way started this website in 1994 as the Online Knitting Magazine. When I came online in 1995, the site had a good set of links, but since then it has grown with the Internet and transformed into Wool Works, with a huge set of links. The automation on this site is impressive -- anyone with a knitting or fiber related site can add it using Emily's simple form.

As well as links, the site includes a list of retail stores indexed by state and country, with one of my favorite World Wide Web gizmos, clickable maps. I was able to find my favorite yarn store, Amanda's Art-Yarns & Fibers in Poulsbo, Washington, USA, with no trouble at all!

Other features of Wool Works are a threaded discussion forum, a page of free patterns, a gallery of photos of finished knitting, and a section called Crafts, which includes knit tips from the KnitList. Although there are some good tips in this section, the page is a bit dated -- the ones I found were from 1995. But since this is a non-commercial site maintained by volunteers, I can't find fault with it, considering what a massive achievement the site is as a whole.

Emily is not only a webmistress par excellence, she also maintains a home page, with even more links to diverse subjects such as movies and the humanities. If you have any doubts about Emily's qualifications as a knitter, here's a picture of the Kaffe Fassett sweater she knit. Emily is humble about her accomplishments, but in my opinion she has made a great contribution to online knitting.

Free Patterns: Here's a fascinating web site -- Historical Knitting Patterns. The site features patterns from needlework books dating back to 1842. There's one for a "D'Oyley," another for a "Becoming Wool Hood for Motoring," and many more. If you'd like to make one of these charming antiques, be sure and read the page entitled A Note on the Patterns, where you will learn, among other things, that "purl" used to be spelled "pearl."