There's a couple things you discover once you start knitting: 1) There's a whole sub-culture complete with a new dialect like LYS, UFOs, frogging, tinking etc and 2) it can get expensive.
Knitomatic would be considered my local yarn store (LYS) and it's a great place to find beautiful gift-giving worthy yarn. You won't find scratchy acrylic economy balls here. You can really feel the difference when working with quality yarns and of course you get what you pay for.
They do offer a variety of knitting classes. I took a hat-making class a couple years ago led by Liane and it was great to have someone demystify knitting in a circle. That particular class was $60 for two sessions and included all the yarn and needles required to complete the hat. There are just some things you can't really learn over the internet and once I knew how to knit a hat I felt like I had graduated from knitting rectangles (scarves) out of cheap acrylic and had the confidence to knit almost anything!
Great variety of books for sale too.