You can keep singing if you want. It certainly is a H@@**$#^ town. It is also a very yarny, fibery town. Tom and I were there in January for our annual trip. Cold, windy and not as full of tourists. Our timing also quite often is during tax free shopping weekend. Whoopee! And now I know it also, happily, coincides with the Vogue Knitting yarn-a-palooza. Bigger Whoopee!!!
This trip we didn’t make plans to do anything, well almost anything. Very different approach for us. We usually see shows, have dinner rezzies at fun new and old spots, and have big museum plans for lots of things to see there. We planned to take it easy. We did see a concert at the Morgan Library. It is a very small space, quite intimate. The couple performing were a cellist and her guitar playing husband. We thoroughly enjoyed it. Their performance handle is Boyd meets Girl. His last name is Boyd….
The other plan ahead was to buy tickets to see the History of Magic exhibit at the Historical Society. ‘Twas all about the magic in Harry Potter and the history surrounding its origins. Hogwarts wanna be’s all over the place; of all ages too, many dressed in their preferred house colors. I’m not giving you a link here because the exhibit is over now.
And then the last minute add on was a piano concert at Carnegie Hall. Again, wise choice. The pianist, Jonathan Biss, is a Beethoven sonata expert. He teaches a course on Coursera about understanding B’s sonatas and is on his way to record all of B’s sonatas. Kind of a big goal for those who are familiar with them. Any who, we loved the concert.
And on to the yarn part.
Knowing we didn’t really have an agenda, I had done the “yarn shops in NYC” google search and made note of places that might be interesting to scope out if we were in the vicinity. Of course. I think I might have mentioned this to Tom. We ended up having our own mini yarn crawl over about 3 days.
No Opium smoking allowed 
Knitty City
The first stop was Knitty City. They are on the upper west side not all that far from the Historical Society. See, the stop fit right in to our path. The shop is long and skinny. And jam packed full of yarn and people shopping and/or working on projects. Tom made me take the picture on the left. Cracked us both up. We didn’t see anyone smoking regular cigarettes either.
The folks there were quite friendly. When they found out we were from out of town, they asked if we were here for Vogue Knitting. I had no idea what that was (neither did Tom :-)). So, it’s a Fiber Fest. This year it was at the Time’s Square Marriott. Two floors of yarn. OMG. And that was partly why there were so many boxes sitting around the shop (and most other shops we explored). Everyone was getting ready to go set up their booth.
The next day, in the rain, we wandered to the upper East Side. Had a great lunch at one of our preferred spots (Fig and Olive) and then checked out String Yarns. Again, friendly and busy. They have their own line of yarn that looked lovely but I fell in love with some more or less one of a kind yarn (more on that in another post).
And then Friday we took to the subway down to SoHo, West Village, Chelsea area to wander around. Three yarn shops there. The first was Lion Brand; big name, can buy anywhere but they do have some things there that are unique and not sold online. ‘Nuf said. The second place, Downtown Yarns is charming and, they have a shop dog. Again, very small and packed to the gills. I selected yarn to take home with me from a small dyer that the gals there really liked; the yarn and the dyer.(Again, more later). Their website has a full schedule of classes listed. I have no idea where they might hold them…maybe there’s a hidden room.
The third was Purl Soho. I had totally forgotten about it and we stumbled upon it as we explored the area. Lovely yarn, lovely people and very, very busy. Nothing that isn’t available online so I didn’t make a purchase. If you haven’t seen their website, they are really great about putting kits together and have their own line of yarns. Their focus is mostly on knitters.
There were a few other shops we did not check out since they weren’t in our flight path during that trip. And then, there was the yarn-a-palooza in Time’s Square to make up for it. Of course, the official NYC yarn crawl would be fun to fly up and explore. I believe it’s in September of every year but this year’s is not yet posted on their website.
Until next time. Happy yarning!