I don't really like the Skyrim-way. It would make crafting trivial and boring if everything is already there. Maybe a bit better: the craftable item would only appear in the list if we find and 'learn' the recipe.
I didn't play much with the actual version so not sure how it works now, but it could be also ok to have a different little container with 9 or 12 slots where we could drag and drop everything we want and than click a 'craft' or 'empty' button. If we just close the tool, the items would simply stay in the container and we would find them when we open it again.
I already played a game with similar crafting, no idea which one. Maybe Morrowind or Oblivion? Or Skyrim alchemy was that?
Or the Diablo 2 cube was something like this..
Last edited by Endre; 05/05/14 03:28 PM.