Since then I have used my Mac's lovely "print to PDF" feature to save copies of a lot of knitting patterns.
And then along came Ravelry, which lets you save a link to a pattern in your account. I've been somewhat seduced by the ease of doing that (you can put a button on your browser toolbar to do it) although I still make PDFs of most patterns too.
Apparently today the magknits.com web site (a free online monthly webzine with knitting patterns) went bye-bye. A lot of people on Ravelry are upset that patterns they had put into their Ravelry queues are no longer available.
Which reminds me, I need to make sure I have PDFs of the patterns in my Ravelry queue.