I love New York City (NYC) and I’ve been there many many many times. This is a continuation of the post Time in Times Square about the couple days that my sister, John and my nephew L spent in NYC in October 2025. This post is a little bit about our wander from Soho to Chelsea one day, with most of the time spent in the West Village.

I grew up in Long Island, NY and Albany, NY. I remember when I was 14 years old in the late 1970s taking the train from Long Island to NYC with a high school friend. We were two teens wandering around NYC unsupervised. Perhaps not the safest idea nowadays but it seemed okay (maybe back then).

Because I’ve been to NYC so many times, when I visit, which is usually with my sister who loves NYC also, we like to focus on a specific neighborhood(s) and just enjoy our times like locals. We are very “un-touristy”.

Some Background on NYC and How I’ve Visited Over the Years

If you are not familiar with New York City, it is comprised of five (5) boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and Staten Island. The boroughs are then divided into neighborhoods.

For examples some of the well known neighborhoods in Manhattan are Greenwich Village, Soho, Tribeca, Chinatown, Upper East Side, Central Park, Hell’s Kitchen, Harlem, Meatpacking District, etc.

Image credit: Wikipedia

The challenge with visiting NYC is there is SO MUCH TO DO and SO MUCH TO SEE that you have to narrow your visit to just a specific section to really enjoy it (at least in my opinion). Here are some examples:

Back in 2017 when I attended Quilter’s Take Manhattan (see posts from my blogging category Quilters Take Manhattan), I pretty much only spent time in the Garment District and Central Park area (I spent the most amazing day on my own at the Metropolitan Museum of Art one of the most magical places in the world in my opinion).

When my visited NYC Spring 2024 we didn’t even visit Manhattan (see post Springtime in Brooklyn ), we just stayed in Brooklyn. Primarily hanging out in the neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Dumbo and Bedford-Stuyvesant.

When my sister and I attended New York Fashion Week in Manhattan in 2021 we primarily hung out in Soho and accidentally discovered the “Little Paris” micro-neighborhood that we didn’t even know existed (a cultural heritage project and micro neighborhood occupying the stretch of Centre Street between Grand Street and Broome Street – Wikipedia).

So what I am trying to explain in a very long-winded manner is when I visit NYC I focus on a small part of NYC each time I visit.

And that’s what we did in October. We stuck primarily to the Manhattan neighborhoods of West Village, Soho, and Chelsea.

The Tiniest Yarn Shop

While in West Village we discovered what I call the “tiniest yarn shop I’ve ever seen” – West Village Knit & Needle. There maybe smaller ones but was impressively small!

We took the narrow stairs down to the shop in a brownstone’s basement:

There was barely enough room for John, my sister, my nephew and I to maneuver around (they were great sports stopping at bookstores and craft stores whenever I came upon one) but here is a little tour:

The staff was very friendly and one of them was working on an amazing cabled cardigan:

That is some serious cable knitting. I tried to learn to knit cables when we were visiting Ireland in October 2022 in a class taught by Helen of Knit with Helen but I have yet to finish the cabled knitted headband project she gave me to take home!

Helen is the one who knitted the tiny cabled sweater worn by the tierneycreates Beastie:

tierneycreates Beastie with Mattie Beastie (both wearing tiny cable knit sweaters by Helen) and John Beastie in Dublin, October 2022

(By the way we are returning to Dublin in 2026 on our way to visit London for the first time. Aer Lingus flies out of Denver now and we can fly directly, for a reasonable price, to Dublin and then hop on an hour and a half flight to Heathrow. We had such a wonderful time in Ireland 3 years ago we want to stop there again for a couple days before heading to the UK)

I am all over the place in this post, what was I originally blogging about? Oh yes – wandering around the West Village in Manhattan.

We Snuck in Some Thrifting

While wandering around West Village we came upon a charity thrift shop – Housing Works Thrift Shops and just had to peek in.

My sister and I love thrifting (we usually find a thrift shop or two on our sister vacations) and I seem to have corrupted John, who at first appeared to be tortured whenever asked to accompany me into a thrift shop. He now seems to enjoy them and was excited to pop into this thrift shop for a wander.

Yes that’s John in the photo above buying something at the thrift shop.

And a Couple Other Places

We didn’t just torture John to thrift stores and yarn shops, my sister surprised him with a visit to the famous Garber Hardware a family owned and operated hardware store in business since 1884.

John was happy wandering this cool hardware store!

We also visited a couple independent bookstores and this one was my favorite – Three Lives & Co.

I had a wonderful chat with the bookstore staff who told me that surprising a lot of people from Colorado has visited there store recently (what?!?! are a bunch of fellow Coloradans all sneaking over to NYC?!?!). John bought a book as did my nephew but I just bought some postcards and bookmarks, as I need another book in queue to read like I need a hole in the head!

We also ate our way through the neighborhoods we visited picking up little treats, snacks and tastes here and there. There is SO MUCH GOOD FOOD in NYC its difficult to even put into words.

For example while wandering we stopped at a wonderful little tiny sushi counter and got a little sushi roll snack to fortify us for our continuing adventures.

Okay you might be asleep now but that’s the end of this post 🙂

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Postscript

I misled you, there is a little bit more to this post.

In this post I mentioned the tierneycreates Beastie (Beastie Adventures). I realized she has not “guest blogger post” for a long time on my blog. She used to be quite active. I used to also have Mike the Miniature Schnauzer (who passed in July 2024) “guest blogger post” quite a bit. I think when he passed I just stopped with the “guest blogger” postings.

But in the future I will be bringing back the tierneycreates Beastie as a guest blogger. She has been primarily hanging out in her “apartment” in my studio and I realize it’s time to take her on some adventures again (I have to give her stuff to blog about!) 🙂