Oh. Ok. Now I get what all the fuss is about…

One of my first posts when I started this blog was about how pleased I was when I took my printed copies of the PDFs of the Priscilla books (available online at the Antique Pattern Library) in to have them bound.  Sure, it was just a cheap spiral comb binding, but it was so nice to have them all bound and looking like real books.  Something about the transition from a stack of papers to a bound collection made them seem like a more real collection of patterns.  Just printing them had also helped, but this furthered the feeling even more.

I love all the patterns available on the Antique Pattern Library but having them in PDF form isn’t the most easily browse-able.  It was nice to have the Priscilla books in a printed form I could curl up on a couch with or pull out of a bag to show someone what I was working on.  I downloaded to my computer and debated printing more from the Antique Pattern Library, but unless I knew it would be a book I would be working from a lot I didn’t really want more things printed.  Of course, having them sit on my computer as non-browsing-friendly PDFs means that it’ll be a long time before I get around to browsing and discovering the patterns that make printing and binding the books worthwhile.

Enter the iPad.  Oh glorious day!  I can’t tell you how excited I was to upload all the Antique Library PDFs I had on my computer to iBooks on the iPad.  It’s pretty ridiculous the joy it gives me to see the books lined up digitally in one place like this.  Don’t they just look so pretty in the picture above.  And so easy to browse.  With the old printing of the Priscilla books I’m especially enjoying being able to zoom in easily.  I like the bookmark feature, but my only complaint is that I can’t add notes to the bookmarks.  My paperbooks are covered in sticky notes that not only mark the patterns that I want to come back to, but also let me know what I was thinking of doing with the patterns.

The iPad I’m using is a friend’s old iPad 1 that I’m just borrowing to decide if I want to get one of my own.  I have to say that just for the excitement of having all my PDFs in one place it’s looking like it’s worth it.  The only problem with the iPad 1 is that it doesn’t have a camera.  I was thinking it would be awesome to be able to take pictures of the pages of other books I own so that I would always having the patterns I’m working on with me.  I could always take the pictures with my regular camera and upload them, but that’s more steps and more steps means less likely to actually happen.  :)  I suppose that’s technically against copyright laws, but it would be for personal use of books that I already own.

Didn’t mean for this to turn into a commercial for the iPad, but the whole concept of being able to browse my entire pattern library from one device is sort of blowing my mind.  Yes, that’s right.  I’m finally stepping into 2010.