ravelry.com is a fantastic social network that has a db of patterns. they don't keep most of them on the site itself - just the fact that the pattern exists and

ravelry.com is a fantastic social network that has a db of patterns. they don't keep most of them on the site itself - just the fact that the pattern exists and where to find it, what kind of yarns are recommended along with what kind of needles, projects of the same pattern done by other members with however much information they care to include - although some designers do sell their patterns on the site. See http://img.skitch.com/20090509-fuy92fx7e5rykfgu377tgyg3wt.jpg http://img.skitch.com/20090509-fuy92fx7e5rykfgu377tgyg3wt.jp... for an example. unfortunately, a lot of the nicer patterns are from print magazines, but there are some exceptions to the rule - knitty.com for one is all online. It's unfortunate more magazines don't sell their patterns online as well, because sometimes it becomes impossible to find the pattern when it's not been printed and you can't find anyone to sell it to you.