Photograph courtesy of Chin family

By Carol Tannenhauser

Winter is knitting season. And the crowd at Knitty City, the Upper West Side’s local yarn store, shows it. The small shop, on West 79th Street just west of Amsterdam, is jam packed nearly any time you enter it these days. The chaos is cheery and warm.

This month, Knitty City celebrated its 20th anniversary on the Upper West Side. In those years it has grown into a worldwide “destination” store, according to Arvin Chin, 77, husband and partner of its founder, the late Pearl Chin.

Arvin points to maps of the United States and the world mounted on a wall, with hundreds of pins in them marking places customers have come from to visit Knitty City. At the same time, with its after-hour classes and events, and offerings of yarns dyed locally in New York, the store remains a community hub and haven. 

Pearl Chin. Photograph by Zac Chin.

Pearl’s presence still permeates the shop though she died five years ago of cancer.

“She had symptoms in June of 2020, a cough. They kept testing her for COVID, but she didn’t have it. The diagnosis came in August, treatment in September, and by October she was gone,” Arvin recalls. He says it took him four years to accept her loss. “I definitely still feel her presence in the store. It was all inspired by her,” he says.

Pearl and Arvin’s son Zac is now running Knitty City, fulfilling Pearl’s hope that it would be a family business. She had grown up working in her family’s grocery store in Houston, Texas, and wanted the same experience for her own family. “She did a lot of arts and crafts when the children were young,” Arvin recalls. “She was very talented, making things. She did origami for a long time and had a wholesale business. Then, in 2005, she decided to go into retail business and wanted to open a yarn store. She had started knitting when she was pregnant with our first child and really enjoyed it. So she told me that’s what she wanted to do and she just needed a little money to help start it. I gave her the money and she gave me 49%. It was always her business. She was the boss.”

Arvin, spinning yarn into balls. Photograph by Carol Tannenhauser.

A retired anesthesiologist and medical corps lieutenant colonel, deployed in 2003 to Iraq and Afghanistan, Arvin jokingly says he does “whatever no one else wants to” around the store, which includes bringing packages to the post office daily for deliveries and manning the wooden machine that rolls skeins of yarn into balls, a service Pearl wanted Knitty City to provide.

“Pearl’s goal was to educate people about how to knit and become better knitters, to inspire them to enjoy knitting and crochet,” Arvin says. “I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that, especially with beginning knitters. The older ones have their direction. The younger ones need to be inspired to continue knitting and getting joy and satisfaction from it. I think that’s what Pearl would want. And so, if I can further her goals, I’ll do it. That’s my goal at Knitty City, to continue her legacy.

“Hopefully there’ll be knitters around for the next generation that we will continue to support however we can,” he adds.

Arvin and Zac beside a yarn rendering of Pearl. Courtesy of Chin family

Officially, Knitty City is open from noon to 6 p.m., but the storefront rarely locks up before 8. After hours there are classes, as well as men’s knitting nights on three Thursdays a month and a book club on the fourth. (Both were started by Pearl.) Arvin says some of the men are “fantastic” knitters. He himself knits, having been taught as a child by his older sisters, but says he’s “not great.” Scarves are his speed.

I went to Knitty City to interview the men in the Thursday night men’s knitting group, but they barely looked up from their knitting to make eye contact. After I watched for awhile, one man softened a little and explained, “We take knitting seriously.” Arvin says the men “value their privacy.” I could hear them talking about how sleeves would be attached to the body of a sweater, or how a scarf could be finished. I didn’t want to interrupt, violate what was clearly treasured time for them.

“There are at least two types of knitters, sort of like two types of travelers,” Arvin says. “One traveler enjoys traveling to the destination and the other traveler enjoys being at the destination. It’s like that with knitting. Do you enjoy knitting or do you enjoy finishing the product? I’m the latter. But I think the best knitters are actually people who enjoy the voyage.

“Pearl was the former,” he concludes. “She was one who enjoyed the process.”

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