Knitting is my recent obsession, and eminently bloggable, but my lifetime love affair is with books. So it is not surprising that my "stash" of knitting books has grown faster than the actual yarn. I stumbled across a great new online library cataloging system, LibraryThing. Books are easy to enter - type in part of the title, or author, and select from the results. You can also tag books, and see which books are "fraternal twins" to the ones you already own. I envision other uses for the tags, like cataloging location (I already have a whole standardized matrix notation planned out for the bookshelves), and books on loan. Or, scary thought, even books to trade.
In other book news, I broke down and purchased the Alice Starmore Fair Isle and Aran Knitting books off of eBay. Both from the same seller, and both a bit below what they typically go for, but still ouch. I would still like the Charted Designs book, but am not going to purchase the pattern books. Some of the patterns I would most like to knit are available as kits (with updated patterns) anyway.
Borealis Yarns keeps me well-satisfied with their book selection - and given the low profit margin on books (and the undercutting from the bargain bin market), it is a much larger stock than is really profitable. But sometimes I want something well off the beaten path - and I found a great online bookseller Knitter's Bookshelf, for the books Borealis doesn't carry. A great selection of books, and even better, extensive reviews. There are small discounts scattered throughout the site, which offset shipping for a large order. Great communication, and fast shipping. They notified me immediately that one of the books I had ordered had gone out of print, and suggested an alternate seller. (Yeah, the high cost of some of the out-of-print knitting books has partly spurred the book buying frenzy. I am trying to get my most-desired books, and keep tabs on which ones are going out of print.)
Library Thing is a great idea. I have a TON of books and this would be a great way to catalog them. Thanks for mentioning it!
Posted by: Rebecca | April 07, 2006 at 03:43 PM