Stitch This

So, I got an iPad 2 for Christmas, did I mention that?

I’ve been playing with it for a while now and thought it might be fun to run an occasional series (iStitch, see what I did there!?) of tips and ideas that might prove useful, daft or ideally both.

First up is a simple but deadly idea for those of you who like to knit/hook/stitch on the go. If you’re anything like me you will have a Bottomless Pit in your handbag where hairpins, sweeties and pencils go to die. And patterns.

I carry scraps of patterns around with me and I either lose them or they get so mangled I can’t read them. No more! I just take a picture of the relevant part and save it to my iPhone or iPad. I am not sharing it  and I’ve bought the pattern personally so I think copyright is OK and it means (a) you don’t lose it and (b) your handbag is a (little) neater. It works best for repeating patterns like lace where you just want to check in every now and again that you’ve got it right.

Second idea may be a little esoteric but I’ve found it v useful indeed. If you have a passion for foreign patterns (I like Marie Claire Idees for example) then you can download the relevant dictionary to your iPad so that you can translate those pesky phrases straightaway once you have downloaded your pattern from say Ravelry. You can also try doing an online translation and then saving the PDF of the English page to iBooks as above. Nifty.

I’ve got a few more which I’ll add in due course but I hope these are useful. Please tell me if not!!