Saturday, the knitting crew (Suzy, Deena, Misha, Desmond and I) with a special appearance by my non-knitting roommate Amanda left the city for a day of shopping in the suburbs. It was our day to hop on the yarn bus and go to Flying Fingers in Tarrytown, New York. The yarn bus is a pimped out cargo van with 3 huge balls of yarn with 2 enormous knitting needles going though them that picks people up (for free) from New York City and brings them to Flying Fingers Yarn Shop in Westchester County. What a brilliant idea! I am sure if they didn't have the bus my friends and I wouldn't checked out the store. I am not sure why other suburban stores don't do this.
It was a 45 minute (maybe less) ride from downtown NYC to the store. The ride up was fun. We chatted the entire way up. I have no clue what we talked about, but I know there was a lot of knitting/yarn/pattern chatter, bad sex jokes and silly inside jokes. I felt sorry for Dillon, the driver, and Karen, the only passenger on the bus who was not a part of our group. Karen was visiting from Colorado to see her children run in the New York marathon. I am sure we gave her plenty to talk about over dinner with her husband and other travel buddies. I am sure she never expected to go a knitting journey with a van full of chatty women of color.
Flying Fingers Review:
I am not sure what I expected, but what I saw isn't what I expected. It was small and cluttered. I had this crazy idea that since it was outside of the city that the store would be bigger than a city store and I also thought that because they have a special bus for the store that is must be the most amazing store ever.
The biggest issue I had with the store was there was too much merchandise for the little space. Stuff was everywhere. If I wanted to see yarn crammed into a little space, I would have stayed home and looked at my yarn.
Yarns were mixed up with other yarns. I had a hard time finding stuff. My poor little brain couldn't take it all in. I was overwhelmed. As soon as Amanda, the non-knitter, came into the store she told me she was overwhelmed and this store was so different than the other stores that I have taken her to. She came with us to find the perfect purple yarn for her new coat, but was quickly discouraged by the disorder.
Besides stuff being everywhere it wasn't clearly labeled. It was hard to tell what the cost or what yarns created samples. Some yarns had price tags and others didn't. Some samples were clearly labeled and others weren't. I tried my best to try to take a look at each section to find goodies, because I could tell hat there were goodies all over the store. They just needed to be hunted for.
Because of the clutter it was hard for me to find all of the Manos del Uryguay yarns. I kept hearing that Flying Fingers had the entire line of Manos yarns and that they had colors that no one else has. Because I kept hearing this I didn't purchase any during the NYC Yarn Crawl that I went on a couple of weeks ago, because I knew I was going to Flying Fingers. I wish I would have bought the yarn I saw on the yarn crawl, because I couldn't figure out what I was looking at on Saturday. I t was hard for me to really see what Manos yarns were there, because of the disorganization of the store. When I have a real need to buy Manos, I am going to Yarntopia, Downtown Yarns or Purl Soho to check out their selections because they were better organized and it was easy for me to see all of the pretty pretty yarns.
The staff was super helpful, especially Dillon, the driver of the van/salesman. I am not sure if he could tell that I was confused, because he helped me a lot when I was trying to figure out what was what. I recall looking at a yarn and he said do you want to see a sample of that yarn knitted up. As quickly as I said yes he showed me the sample. He did that a couple of times and it made my shopping experience much better. If he didn't help I wouldn't have purchased anything.
I am glad that after all of these years of talking about it I finally took the ride on the yarn bus.
Recommendation:
Would I go Flying Fingers again? Hmmmmm. Maybe. I didn't hate it to the point where I wouldn't spend my money there. I happy supported the shop and if I love the Madelinetosh yarn as much as think I am going to, I would go back and get some more.
If a friend wanted to experience the yarn bus, I would go with them. It is a nice quick trip. Or if a friend, who had a car, wanted to take a ride and get some great burgers. I would suggest Horsefeathers and take a peak in Flying Fingers just because I am addicted to yarn and wouldn't be able to resist.
Lots of good products but you be good savager hunter/detective to find them and since I really don't enjoy digging for my items it is not the store for me, but I do suggest that people check it out, because the staff is really nice. But if you are like me and you freak out from clutter, then don't bother. Cause you will get caught up on thinking about how you could rearrange all of the items.
My purchase:
- 2 skeins of Berrco Ultra Alpaca - one black and one purple for Amanda's hat
- 2 skeins of Lang sock yarn
- 1 skein of hand dyed emerald green Madelinetosh merino wool
Lunch:
After an hour or so of shopping we walked over to Horsefeathers Pub for lunch. I highly recommend this place. The food was amazing and you get a lot of food for your money. I had a turkey burger and fries. The burger was well seasoned. The fries were fresh cut and they were huge! I couldn't finish my burger. I took half of it home. My table mates enjoyed their food too.
