Though Brian's birthday isn't until September 13, I thought it would be fun to go on a yarn shopping trip. We hadn't been yarn shopping together in quite some time and also I owed him from some ebay destashing I helped with when he moved a year ago. Brian took an hour and a half train ride up to Jersey City from Princeton (it usually doesn't take that long but it was a holiday weekend) and we had a lovely brunch at a French restaurant I LOVE.
After breakfast of lamb sausage crepes, we proceeded on the hour and a half car journey up to Tarrytown, NY.
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We went through New Jersey to try to avoid the traffic in the city on Saturdays. We failed and hit traffic anyway.
Once over the Tappan Zee Bridge and onto our destination, we cruised Main Street in Tarrytown and remarked that the new location for our favorite LYS* looks just like the old location for our favorite LYS. However, as we went down the street looking for Flying Fingers, we had a hard time finding Wooly Wooly, the Fiber Glass Yarn Ball Sheep that is so ubiquitous of Flying Fingers. We thought for certain she would be in the front window.
All we found, however, was the following:
Yes, it appears that they are decorating in craft paper and with no warning from the Flying Fingers website, everyone related to the yarn store is on vacation and we are stuck in Tarrytown with no yarn to drop bills on.
We felt like this:
However, I am a travelling attorney and I have done my share of closings in the Greater New York City area (and beyond) and my legal assistants know to hook me up with directions to the closest LYS to my far flung closings. This once led me to a barn in the middle of nowhere, but I digress.
I have had the pleasure of visiting Knitting Nation twice previously, and it is located just over the Tappan Zee bridge (from whence we came) in Nyak, NY. I went to this store once right after they opened and bought materials for my first socks and once again a little over a year ago. I was always impressed by the yarn and the book selection.
This time, however, they really outdid themselves. The store was full to bursting with yarn, sample projects and the bookshelves were overflowing. We were giddy and spent at least 2 hours in there poring over potential purchases and giggling over new yarn content since the last time we had any sort of yarn binge.
We both bought sock yarn with Chitin content. Tofutsies had a ton of colorways and it was really difficult to decide which one. Brian got a great beige colorway that I convinced him to get because how often do you really find sock yarn in a great muted colorway like that? Mine was a pretty outrageous color.
I grabbed a stack of books I wanted to look through. Not only did they have virtually all of the Elizabeth Zimmerman tomes, they had Barbara Walker, too. Some LYSs just have a few pattern booklets and the major "new guard" knitting books. I had been reading a lot of blog posts about the new guard versus the old guard and I wanted to see for myself. Obviously, I have only been doing this for about three years and have enjoyed immersing myself in the new knitster culture, but I also want to know where we come from and get a feel for it myself.
Nicky Epsteins Knitting on the Edge series reminds me a great deal of the Barbara Walker treasury I looked through, but I don't think I have found anything contemporary that reminds me if the Elizabeth Zimmerman series. I would really like to read her work in depth because the mathematical concepts are so intriguing. If only I could get my mother (a math teacher with a pHd) to read knitting books though she does not knit.
Brian scored some Noro Silk Garden (not on sale) as his birthday present from me in a fantastic colorway, both masculine and colorful, we both got some Classic Elite Miracle on sale, the aforementioned crab sock yarn, he got a couple of other yarns on sale, I bought some magical pink fuzzy yarns that looked so good I almost don't want to knit them and instead put them in a vase. For $20 on sale I was really excited to get all this pink yarn.
The anniversary sale is totally the best time to "stumble in" to Knitting Nation, even though the proprietess does not wind yarn on the ball winder when you buy stuff on sale.
Anyway, our day was not a total bust even though we are still sort of pouty about Flying Fingers not even putting a note on the website that they are closed for Labor Day Weekend.
Check out our whole Yarn Day Adventure at this flickr set!!
*Local Yarn Shoppe
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