What a great trip! I had a wonderful visit with my mother and was also able to meet up with fellow knit-bloggers Jenn, of nipperknits, Elisabeth, of Curls and Purls NYC, and Jackie, of Jackie Blue. Check out their blogs for pics of all of us together - and look for a cameo by my mom! I just can't say enough good things about these three NYC knitters. Jenn is the cutest little thing you ever saw. It was real pleasure hanging out with her, talking yarn and politics and stuff (we didn't even get to discuss our shared crush on Ron Weasley!). Mom and I even followed her after our yarn shopping adventure over to the Swatch store where she works to buy a few watches! Elisabeth was the best guide one could ever find to the fabulous world of yummy yarns and snacks that is downtown Manhattan. And such a friendly and fabulous woman herself. I'm never shopping in NYC again without her! And Jackie, whose blog was one of the first I ever read and whose projects I've long admired, was just as fun and hip as her blog would lead you to imagine. She looked so stylish in her new Phil' Ruban tank and Phil' Eponge sweater and her current Rowan project is another to-die-for knit. She's a real New York gal too. So cool sitting in KnitNY, knitting with New Yorkers. I felt so at home! Thanks, girls!

So, wanna see where we went?

the obligatory purl shot

First was Purl Soho. I loved it! Such incredible yarns, a whole table full of beautiful swatches to entice you, and a very friendly staff to boot. You can't beat that! While my mom and I shopped, the gals sat and knitted (shouldn't it be "sat and knat"?) at the table in the middle of the store. It was a really comfortable atmosphere. I love it when a yarn store welcomes people to knit and browse, even if not everyone is shopping. The other gals have much better pics of us sitting at the table in Purl, but I've got a close-up of the cute little doggie that slept on the table while we were knitting. I left the Vintage Knits book in there for scale. That dog was so tiny and so adorable in its little Polo shirt! If it weren't for hunger pangs, I could have stayed there all day with the dog, the girls, the yarn....

purl makes me happy

After a fabulous lunch at Once upon a Tart, the gang moseyed on over to Downtown Yarns.

is that Calmer on sale?! - oh, this IS a good store

Another incredible wall of yarn, a giant table for sitting and knitting, and the nicest staff EVER. We loved it so much we even went back the next day for more. They recognized us of course, because we were in there forever on Saturday! There wasn't a cute little doggie, but just look at the adorable teddy bear they had on display, knitted out of some really cool rug yarn.

raise high the roofbeam knitters

One piece of advice for when you go to this store: Don't forget to look up! The room might not be that big, but there's yarn and amazing display items all the way to the gloriously high ceilings. I still don't think we managed to see everything in there! We would have kept looking, but hunger got the best of us again and we finished off the last day by having another yummy lunch. This time at nearby Benny's Burritos. I couldn't resist the name. That's how mothers are, you know.

So what did I buy? Tune in tomorrow for the shopping bags....