Mahattan Yarn Wrap Up

Whew! It looks like I finished reviewing all the Manhattan yarn stores (although I will include Knit New York when it opens again). It’s been really fun so far, and I have learned a ton! When I started this project, I was unaware of many American (and Canadian) yarns.

I did not know Artyarns (picture above), or Koigu, or Prism… It has been such a journey of discovery. I have met diverse and interesting women (and two men). I am amazed by all this creativity in our New York yarn community, from yarn store owners, to “yarn painters”, to spinners, fiber artists, knitwear designers, yarn editors, writers..., and of course to all the knitters out there, who have chosen to create a niche for themselves in this world of yarn that seems so small from the outside, yet so large when you are involved in it. I know now that you can actually make a living as a fiber artist. I have been blown away by Xenobia Bailey and Nick Cave. I have had moments of wanting to open a yarn store (only moments—it seems way too time intensive for my current life situation). At other times I wanted to go back to school so I could learn quilting, and crocheting, and sewing, and spinning, and dyeing yarn… Mostly, however, I am so impressed by these individual women (and men) who own or rent these tiny pieces of Manhattan where they try to realize their visions and display their yarns for us to enjoy and purchase. Each of their stores is as different as their personalities, but all of them are united in a mutual love of yarns.

As of next week, I will write about stores that are related to knitting but don’t carry yarns exclusively. When we knit, we often need buttons, zippers, collars, or other embellishments. We need to finish our garments, and some of the finishing tools can be found in stores that carry little or no yarn. For the adventurous knitter who wants to design his/her own stuff, or for anyone who is using a pattern that calls for embellishments, I will cover these stores before I move on to Brooklyn. My selection is only a small sample. I chose a few places that I really like (such as Tender Buttons and M&J Trimming), but please e-mail me (or leave a comment) if you have a personal favorite. :-)

If I have forgotten any Manhattan yarn stores (other than stores like P+S, and Stitch & Bitch Cafe, which carry yarn as a side-product, and which I will cover as of next week), please let me know…

Thank you all so much for coming.

I will also launch my own knitwear site soon (at the latest in September), with patterns for men, women, kids, and accessories, some simple and some more complicated.

:-)

Habu Textiles

What a great weekend! My husband and I traveled to Lexington, Kentucky to attend the wedding of two dear friends from Brooklyn (the groom’s father was hosting). The wedding, which was beautiful, was held on a horse farm--need I say more?

It turned out to be quite a knitting trip as well. I was surprised to find out that it is actually o.k. again to knit on an airplane (at least on domestic flights). Our plane took off two hours late on wet ground. This was our first trip without the kids EVER (they were at home with a babysitter), and we were flying together, so I was panicked that something could happen to us. First I thought We are not going to lift off and we’ll land in the river. Once we did lift off, I thought Now birds are going to hit the engines. When I saw the fog outside our window I thought And we won’t see them coming. When I finally had the presence of mind to pull out my knitting, I calmed down considerably. We landed in Lexington, safely, welcomed by incredibly loud birds which turned out to be a tape of bird predators, so the birds get scared away from the planes. Someone told me once that the company that makes these super-loud tapes sold them to China, but when they tried them out, the birds were still flocking around the planes--until somebody did some thinking and figured out that the natural predators in China are not the same as in the USA (duh). So they had to change the tapes to scare the Chinese birds in Chinese. …Anyway, let me get back to knitting.

I had gone to visit Habu Textiles (135 West 29th Street, Suite 804, New York, NY 10001, 212.239.3546 telephone, 212.239.4173 fax, habu@habutextiles.com, http://www.habutextiles.com/) before we left, knowing that I wanted to blog about them today. I have been to Habu before, and it is one of my favorite stores. I had tried to get a hold of Takako, the owner, but she travels a lot. Since I am nearly finished with Manhattan, I decided to chance it and walk in between last-minute trip preparations on Wednesday. I missed Takako, but a very friendly staff member showed me around and asked me to e-mail my questions to Takako, who responded within hours :-).

Walking into Habu feels like entering a Japanese temple of yarn. Everything in the front room is displayed low on the floor in baskets of various sizes. The yarns displayed here look like little flowers growing out of the ground. Bundles of mohair, linen, cotton, paper, and many other fibers (Habu was one of the first stores to carry stainless steel yarn) mingle, most of them adorned with Habu’s own brown-paper wrappers (I found one basket of Fiber Company yarn as well).



But the pretty looking baskets are just the beginning. When you go to Habu for the first time, a person emerges from the side room, which is sectioned off by a curtain that hides some very busy people who seem to be handling some kind of yarn related machinery. The person comes in and tells you to go to the hallway in the back and look at the samples. The hallway is one long wall behind the basket room, where skeins of different sizes hang from little hooks. Each skein is different from the next, and each has a label, identifying the fiber, the yardage, and the price.

You spend as much time as you like (it can take a while) looking at and touching all the interesting textures in front of you. You can find anything here, from linen that feels like paper to actual paper that feels like yarn, to stainless steel wool, or even more exotic things. Once you have figured out what you want, you go back to the curtain and wave at the friendly person you talked to earlier. You tell them what you like, or ask questions if you need to. Since the store can be busy with wholesale orders (many designers order yarn and have it shipped directly to the factory), it can sometimes take a while to get someone’s attention, but don’t despair: you are surrounded by beautiful things, such as these antique hand spindles.

Even though the store is not large, I had a hard time putting down my camera. At some point I simply had to tell myself to put it down and leave to get the rest of the stuff we needed for the wedding. I could easily have spent another hour here (and lots and lots of money, which I don’t have right now). I am trying to save up for my website, so I could not go crazy…
I sent Takako my e-mail from the airport. When we got to our hotel in Lexington (2 hours later), I had received her answer.

Me: When did you open your store?

Takako: In 1999

Me: How did you choose your store's location?

Takako: I had a friend, who had an art gallery. She left years ago, but I stayed. It is very close to subways and is a part of garment district, which seems to attract the kind of customers we need.

Me: What got you into yarns?

Takako: I am a weaver. Materials has been always my passion.

Me: When you purchase yarns, what do you look for?

Takako: That is hard to say, but there is always that "extra" charm. I do like subtle beautiful yarns, but do think that "something" must show... This is very intuitive thing...

Me: What kinds of yarns do you carry?

Takako: Many... over 300 kinds. including paper, ramie, stainless steel, silver, etc. etc.

Me: Who is your staff?

Takako: I have 8 part and full time staff.

Me: Who makes your store samples?

Takako: A couple of my staff at home.

Me: Do you feel that people knit more or less since the recession?

Takako: I think people are knitting more!

Me: One other thing I was wondering is about the yarns with your labels on them. Are they Habu yarns? Do they all come from the same mill? Are they all Japanese?

Takako: The label is our design. We deal with 7-8 different mills, and we wind them here in the back room!

The wedding was fantastic, filled with music and musicians (one of them my husband) who played up a storm. I also met a sheep breeder/dyer/spinner, Janice Hemsley, who breeds Leicester Longwool sheep, which were first brought to this country by George Washington. We chatted at the rehearsal dinner about Leicester sheep and Moreno sheep, and how the king of Portugal actually had jurisdiction over who was to receive his prized merinos. Janice told me that there was a heard of merinos that had been handed from Portugal to Spain, then to Germany, and finally to historic Williamstown, in Virginia. The next day, she brought me a bag full or beautiful hand-sheared/hand-dyed/handspun yarn. I came home a happy person, and was greeted by two children, overwhelmed with emotions, who were very relieved that we were back.

But the highlight was getting the bride ready on her wedding day, and seeing her wear the sweater/shawl/vest I made for her...

It's knitted as a square that functions as a shawl, with buttoned armholes so it can be transformed into a vest, and with button-in sleeves that turn it into a jacket... The jacket closes with a shawl pin.

Knitting 321

We are back in Manhattan now. Anna has recuperated and is back to her usual self. Thankfully, we got home without any messy incidents on the train. Whew! One week later, a new camera in my bag, I am ready to head back out into the world of yarns. I was going to blog yesterday (Monday), as I usually do, so I went to Knitting 321 (321 East 75th Street, New York, NY 10021, Phone: 212-772-2020, Fax: 212-772-2077 http://www.knitting321.com/), only to see that it is closed Sundays and Mondays. Oops--that’s what I get for not calling ahead :-). One day delayed, I managed to eke out a 1 ½ hour window for myself. I took the M3 downtown and hopped off at East 75th street, walking and walking and walking, until I found myself in front of a blue awning with large letters (I’m sorry, I totally forgot to take a picture of the outside of the store). I walked down a steep staircase and entered a long, narrow store, lined with diamond shaped shelves on one side and a large table with piles of magazines on it on the other. I introduced myself to Valeria, who was chatting with three loyal customers.

(picture taken from her website)
The three women, who seemed to know each other (and Valeria) very well, were knitting at the table. They chimed in at my questions, got up and showed me store samples, and shared their individual projects: a very pretty cotton baby blanket, a very sexy black glitter sweater with arm cutouts, and a project not yet conceived. All patterns were created by Valeria (the third woman had just chosen her yarn and was making a gauge before she was measured for the perfect fit). Valeria told me that most patterns in knitting magazines look great in the pictures, but end up being too wide because the yarn stretches over time. She takes this into consideration when creating patterns for her customers. Her extensive design background is very helpful for this. “I worked on 7th Avenue for many, many years. If I had made anything that did not fit when it came back from the factory, I would have lost my job immediately,” she explained.

321 is clearly a neighborhood store. “My customers shop at Bergdorf Goodman,” Valeria explained. “Some of them are top executives. They knit a lot, and they want me to make them patterns for sweaters that look like they could have been bought at Bergdorf, but can be made at home. I don’t really compete with other knitting stores--I compete with Bergdorf Goodman.” She pulled out a sample of a sweater a woman had made. “This woman only knew how to knit,” she said (not purl). “So she knitted the sweater in only knit stitches, and I did the finishing for her.” The sweater (where was my head today, I forgot to take a picture of that, too), was made out of a shiny gold-woven yarn. Beige leather flowers adorned the shoulder, and beautiful crocheted embroidery made it look as though indeed, you could have bought it at the above-mentioned store. “I bought the leather flowers and wanted to make a bag out of it, but my customers said this has to be a sweater." The three women nodded.
“We told her,” one of them said. “Why waste those beautiful things on a bag? Put them on a sweater!”

My little window of time was getting smaller, so I asked Valeria my seven questions:
Me: When did you open the store?

Valeria: Seven years ago, in April of 2002.

Me: What made you choose this location?

Valeria: I live around here.

Me: Who is your staff?

Valeria: I have part time help on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, but the rest of the time I am here alone.

Me: What made you get into yarns?

Valeria: I have always worked with yarns and color. I designed fashion and sportswear. We made everything from scratch. We would choose a color palette and design a complete line around it: pants, blazers, skirts… it all had to fit together. [She sighed.] 7th Avenue is not what it used to be, so I thought about what I could do as a second career.

Me: What do you look for when you purchase yarns?

Valeria: Color and quality. I buy what I like. I custom order colors from Prism and other companies. I know what my customers like. The key to everything is quality. You have to make a good product.

Me: I assume I don’t have to ask who makes your store samples.

Valeria: I make them, and I have a knitter.
One of the women chimed in: “Valeria is a fabulous finisher.” I believe that, having seen the sample sweater with the leather flowers.
“But,” Valeria resumed, “I only finish what was purchased here. It is so much work to finish. I don’t finish other stores’ products.”

Me: Do you offer classes?

Valeria: I teach classes in knitting and crocheting one on one in the mornings, but I am totally booked up until the end of August. If you asked me right now to teach you, I would have to ask you to come back in September. I design for all my customers. They buy the yarn, make a gauge, I measure them and write their patterns. [She held up a handwritten piece of paper.] This is a pattern. I write everything by hand. People can follow it and not have to think once about what they are doing. All my patterns look like this. [She smiled.] What I make fits!

Me: Do you think people knit more or less since the recession?

Valeria: That is a hard question to answer. I think things are not as busy as they were when I first opened. In the last two years things have gotten a bit more quiet.
“But,” one of the women said, “people are much more serious about their knitting than they used to be. All the mitten makers and blanket knitters have fallen away. The customers that are still knitting are very serious about their projects.” The other woman agreed.

I had some time left, so I took out my camera to take pictures of the store. 321 carries Karabella, Schulana, Katia, Noro, Punta yarns, Alchemy, and Prism. “This is one of the yarns I asked them to make,” Valeria said and pulled out a red, variegated yarn. It was stunningly vibrant.
“You have to take a picture of the baby blanket,” one of the woman said and got up. “Here, I know where it is.” She walked to the back of the store and pulled out a very beautiful and delicate blanket covered with hearts.
“
And this is the sampler,” she said, holding up another blanket with different stitch pattern squares.
“Show her the bag you did at the door,” the woman with the sexy black sweater said.

Valeria held it up. The bag was beautifully lined on the inside, with an inlay of something hard and flat supporting the bottom. “Oh, and you have to see this,” Valeria said and strode to the back of the store. “Here,” she pulled a jacket off its hanger. “Try it on. Its magnificent! It’s a circle jacket I just made. It is knitted entirely in one piece. “ I felt the yarn. It was very soft and, I could tell, very warm. I tried it on. It felt just as snugly as it looked.

Happy Memorial Day!

I was going to blog about another yarn store this week, but my camera broke on Friday, so I could not go to take pictures before we left town...

Once again, we are in Connecticut to visit our friends for Labor Day. This is how our weekend began--four happy kids (two of them mine). Its astounds me that you can rent a big house with a huge garden and swimming pool out here for the same price as our Harlem-two-bedroom with no garden!


The rest of the weekend has not been so happy. Anna came down with the stomach flu and is too sick for the journey home, so we are still up here--waiting for her to get better... :-(

Hopefully we'll be back in the city tomorrow...

Happy Memorial Day to everyone, and Good Health to all of you!!

The Woolgathering

It was another gorgeous day today, so I swung on my bike and rode through Central Park to The Woolgathering (318 East 84th Street, New York, NY 10028 Phone: 212.734.4747 www.thewoolgathering.com). I was zipping down 84th street when a woman opened a car door and nearly knocked me off my bicycle. I shrieked, and she pulled it shut at the very last second, reassuring me through the open window. “I wasn’t going to open it far.” I wondered whether this was supposed to console me or reassure her, and I got to the store a bit rattled and in need of comfort. Just the right time to visit some yarn! When I entered Woolgathering, I almost thought I had gone to Downtown Yarns by accident. It has the same long, narrow feel with high ceilings, and similar shelves on the wall. A ladder leans on the yarn shelves just like at Downtown. I looked around to see if there was a big golden retriever lying around, but instead I found a bull mastiff hanging on the wall.

I asked for the owner, but Diane, who was sitting at an antique wooden table with a happily knitting customer, told me that Sylvia had just left for the day (this seems to be my lot lately). The happy knitter, who was making a baby blanket for a friend, chimed in: “You can ask Diane anything you need. She is an expert knitter. Any question you have, she can answer it for you.” They chuckled.
“Sylvia makes it a point to tell people that she loves knitting, but that she is by no means an expert knitter," Diane explained. "I usually answer knitting questions.” She handed me a chair.
“That’s great,” I said and pulled out my notebook. I felt instantly welcomed into the round like an old acquaintance. We chatted a bit--about identical twins who kill one another. (The woman with the baby blanket was holding a book called “The Evil Twin” when I came in. I am an identical twin, so it piqued my interest). Then we moved onto more cheerful topics, and I began to ask my seven questions.

Me: When did this store open?

Diane: The store has been here for about 20 years. Sylvia took it over about 7 years ago.

Me: What made Sylvia chose this location?

Diane: Sylvia lives around the corner. She likes to knit. When she heard that the store was available, she took a chance. Sylvia is tenacious, strong, and entrepreneurial. She also likes to support causes. She donates to all the public schools in the neighborhood, and she carries a line of bags made in Africa to help African women become economically independent. I work here because I like Sylvia. I already knew her when the store opened; we were friends.

My phone rang. It was my husband. “Where is the bus stop down here? No, Andor, don’t pick that up, that’s disgusting!” I didn’t dare ask what it was. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. I told Adam where to go and returned to my conversation, apologizing for the interruption.

Me: Who is your staff?

Diane: I am the manager. I’ve worked here for six years. I am here Monday-Friday, and Karina is here Saturdays; we are closed on Sundays. Sylvia and I are usually here together. We work with a fantastic finisher. I give her a lot of my garments because I don’t particularly like finishing (she laughed). She was here before when the store belonged to the previous owner, and she has continued to work for us.

Me: How do you guys choose yarn?

Diane: I mainly choose the yarn. I look for specific quality, cost, and “washability”. We specialize in baby items, so I like to have yarns that can survive a washing machine cycle. I also look for length (yardage). We sell some books, but we loan a lot of them to people as well. We carry a little bit of everything. Some Artyarns Cashmere (I saw a really pretty beaded Artyarns Cashmere—sigh), some Karabella, some Manos, Malabrigo, Punta, a little bit of Road to China, some Cascade, Tahki Stacy Charles, Prism, and a few others…

Me: Do you guys teach classes?

Diane: We teach classes for very beginners, but when you become a patron we help you with anything. We don’t charge for that.

Me: Who makes your store samples?

Diane: We very rarely do custom patterns. Most of our samples are from companies. I knit some of the blankets. The baby sampler came with the store (she pulled out a beige blanket with different stitch patterns on it). People really like making this blanket. It’s a really good way to practice knitting different stitches.

Me: Do you think people knit more since the recession?

Diane: People definitely knit more. Maybe they look for a bigger bargain, but they knit more--knitting is soothing.

With that thought in mind, I thanked Diane for her time and grabbed my helmet, ready to brave the New York streets again. I carefully watched for opening car doors until I arrived safely at Central Park, where I enjoyed the car-free zone even more than usual. I nearly took my hands of the handle bars, but I was afraid that the empty children’s bike seat behind me would throw off my balance. I got home safely to two fighting kids who were wearing out their Papa. Turns out they were very tired. Once they hit their mattresses, they were out like little lights.

Yarntopia Revisited

This week I went back to Yarntopia, because I had felt so rushed the first time (and missed such fantastic things as the sockyarnwall--picture above). I thought the store hadn’t gotten its due. It kept bothering me, so I decided to go back to see Dona and take some better pictures. I chose to go on the day of my daughter’s fieldtrip to the Museum of Natural History. I went with her class for the trip, and of course Anna wanted to be with me afterward and begged to be taken along. Initially I was going to send her back to school for an hour, see Dona, and pick her up afterwards, but I relented, even though I was feeling a little hesitant about a four-year-old in a yarn shop and what that might mean. When we got to Yarntopia, Dona was in the middle of planning out an elaborate laceyarnwall (right next to the sockyarnwall). A big shipment of gorgeous colors had just come in.

Anna was so well behaved and so helpful that we stayed for nearly 1½ hours (did I mention Dona is really good with kids?). “I can’t leave yet, Mommy, I have to help Dona!” Anna reshelved heaps of yarn, keeping the colors together perfectly, and handed bags and bags of yarn to Dona who was standing on a ladder. I took my pictures and sat down to knit while they worked :-) To make a long story short: please go back to the Yarntopia post and see that I CAN actually take decent pictures of the place (I also added a couple of things in the review that I forgot to mention). After we left I took Anna to "Le Monde" (our favorite pastry cafe).

Happy Mother’s Day!

School Products (Yarns)

I had read about School Products Yarns (1201 Broadway Suite 301 New York NY 10001, 212-679-3516 http://www.schoolproducts.com/—the store is undergoing a name change and adding the “yarns”) on Jared Flood’s blog, so I might have known that it’s a serious yarn store, but no: I got fooled by the name. I walked in expecting to find a big store with lots and lots of school supplies and a rich array of yarns in a corner, yarns such as the ones Jared uses. NOT! I got out of the elevator and found myself in front of a glass wall with a buzzer system. A tall young man buzzed me in. He told me that Rafael (one of the two owners) was about to come in and that if I had any questions I should wait for him. Minutes later, a man in his sixties walked in and introduced himself. “Do you know Armenia?” he asked me after we shook hands. I was so flustered by the forcefulness of his voice that I totally blanked.

Rafael is from Armenia (which is a country bordered by Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Iran--I looked it up :-). He is Berta’s (the other owner’s) husband. School Products, I found out, is the oldest yarn store in Manhattan (since Lion Brand just opened the studio, I am not counting them as an “old store”). School Products is sixty years old and it did start out as a place to purchase school supplies with a hefty yarn corner. Since the yarn corner was the most popular part, it grew as the rest of the store shrank, so now the store is just one huge space filled with yarns. Berta and Rafael took over the business twenty years ago and have been running the store ever since.

Rafael told me that Berta has worked as a technical knitwear developer for Donna Karan, Anna Sui, Ralph Lauren, and Calvin Klein, as well as Banana Republic and Gap. She also started a yarn company called Karabella Yarns, which carries high quality yarns of many kinds: mohair (lace and mid-weight), alpaca, cashmere, cotton, and metallic yarn… She handed the company over to her son, who now runs it. School Products carries the entire line, as well as all of Berta’s designs, specially created for Karabella. Berta’s most recent accomplishment is a book called Runway Knits, which was published in 2007. I got the book. The dresses, shawls and sweaters are pretty spectacular!

Since I had taken my pictures before Rafael walked in, I had some time to let him lead me around. He showed me large spools of yarn, pointing out that the store served both hand and machine knitters. Only then did I realize that I had never even thought of machine knitters as needing yarn—so silly! School Products sells many knitting machine ready spools of yarn, which are less expensive than the balls in the shelves, and can of course be used to knit by hand as well, thus creating an instant discount :-). The store sells more than just Karabella: Koigu, Brown Sheep, Luxor, and a number of hand dyers and spinners. Rafael and Berta also buy out yarn mills that are closing and sell the yarn at a huge discount. It’s definitely a treasure trove for the creative. You come to this store to find something great-- I found this:

500 grams of handspun silk, thinner than lace weight for $35. I have no idea what I am going to do with it, but it made me take it home... Other cool things to know are that the store carries yak, baby camel, and silk cashmere, yarns you don’t get everywhere. Designers come here as well as tourists to browse and haggle (Rafael can be flexible with prices if the volume is right). The store also carries a vast array of knitting supplies, both for machine and hand knitters. There is a book corner at the end of the store, where one could get lost for a number of hours. But Yoga was calling, so I asked Rafael my seven questions before I headed into the subway to go stand upside down on a slippery mat:

Me: When did School Products open?

Rafael: In 1947. We are the oldest yarn store In New York. We took over twenty years ago.

Me: How did you choose this location?

Rafael: The original store was here.

Me: How do you choose your yarns?

Rafael: We carry the whole line of Karabella, which is mostly Italian with some Argentinian. We also carry other companies. Except for a staple of yarns like Koigu and Luxor, we have a number of changing yarns. You can find something different every time you come here. We have served the fashion industry and FIT for many years. The store is known all over the US. We have special deals and high end fibers like silk and cashmere, baby camel and yak. We sell to many machine knitters.

Me: What kinds of classes do you teach?

Rafael: We have very professional help that can give you instructions. We carry over 500 Karabella patterns, which were all designed by Berta, plus 200 individual patterns for our high end fabrics. Berta is in the store every Monday.

Me: I guess I don’t have to ask who knits the store samples.

Rafael: Berta does.

Me: What got you into yarns?

Rafael: Berta’s experience. She worked for many years in the fashion industry.

Me: Do you feel that people are knitting less or more in this economy?

Rafael: The same, but people are more careful with their budgets. People are still knitting a lot, but they try to spend less.