The holidays always bring about a special amount of stress
for most people but for Dakota Walker, this year's
celebratory season has one stress-filled event after
another piled on top of each other. Not only is she
struggling to keep her mother's legacy at the Walker and
Daughter knitting shop and the Friday Night Knitting Club
intact, but she is also helping her 80-year old surrogate
grandmother Anita prepare for her wedding, as well as
taking on a cooking internship at one of the hottest hotels
in New York City. With so much to do and prepare for,
Dakota's family and friends urge her to take a moment to
slow down and consider what all is going on in her life
before everything explodes or implodes!
In KNIT THE SEASON, author Kate Jacobs continues her
stories of the strong and fascinating women of the Friday
Night Knitting Club. The group, first organized by Dakota's
mother, the late Georgia Walker, is still going strong and
being supportive to each other in their various
adventures, romances, crises, and more. Jacobs' imaginative
storytelling skills gives life to each of the female
characters in this series, and it's intriguing and
heartwarming to read of their development over the three
books that began with The Friday Night Knitting Club.
Matriarch of the group Anita Lowenstein is once again
planning her oft-postponed nuptials to her beloved Marty,
this time to take place on New Year's Eve -- whether her
oldest son Nathan likes it or not! Sophisticated antique
shop owner (and Georgia's best friend) Catherine is eagerly
anticipating the arrival of her Italian lover Marco and
hoping maybe he'll be inspired by all the wedding
preparations to pop the question. Peri, the manager of the
knitting shop and pocketbook designer, has an offer that
will make her dreams come true, if she dares accept it;
Darwin is busily raising her twin babies, Lucie is juggling
her elderly mother and her lively daughter, and KC is
bemoaning it all, when she secretly desires to have a piece
of the happiness pie herself.
But the main story revolves around Dakota as she matures
into a talented and sought-after chef-in-training. She
struggles to please everyone, including her father who has
surprised her with a Christmas trip to see her beloved
great-grandmother in Scotland. When she is offered a
chance to intern over Christmas in one of the snazziest
restaurants in town, Dakota is conflicted over which she
should choose -- family or career.
Fans of Kate Jacobs' books will be delighted with this
continuation of a beloved series. Here's hoping for more
stories of the Friday Night Knitting Group down the road!
The ladies of the #1 New York Times bestselling The Friday
Night Knitting Club celebrate special times with family and
friends. Not only are the holidays are just around the
corner, the women who knit at Manhattan's Walker & Daughter
have an extra reason to celebrate: there's a wedding planned
for New Year's Day. In the meantime, college-age Dakota
Walker is working to finish a sweater her mother started
before Dakota was born.
As she takes on her mother's pattern, she learns from her
family and friends that there was much more history in these
stitches than she had anticipated, and that to build on her
mother's legacy, Dakota must allow herself to become the
woman she truly desires to be...
Excerpt
New York seemed to be a city made for celebrations, and
Dakota Walker loved every moment of the holidays: from the
shoulder-to-shoulder crowds breathlessly waiting for the
lighting of the gigantic Christmas tree in Rockefeller
Center, to the winter-themed department store windows
displaying postmodern Santas, to—her favorite—the kickoff to
a month of fun with that ruckus of a parade on Thanksgiving
morning.
Dakota's grandmotherly friend Anita Lowenstein—who,
nearing eighty, could text almost as well as some of her
college classmates— had escorted Dakota to the parade when
she was small. Last Thanksgiving morning, in a fit of
nostalgia, the two of them bundled up in layers, chunky
handmade cable-knits over cotton turtlenecks, and staked out
a spot near Macy's just after sunrise to watch the river of
floating cartoon characters and lip-synching pop stars and
freezing but-giddy high-school marching bands flowing down
Broadway. Just as it should be.
But what Dakota most enjoyed about the beginning of
winter was the crispness of the air (that practically
demanded the wearing of knits) and the way that tough New
Yorkers—on the street, in elevators, in subways—were
suddenly willing to risk a smile. To make a connection with
a stranger. To finally see one another after strenuously
avoiding eye contact all year.
The excuse—the expectation—to bake also played a large
part in her personal delight. Crumbly, melty shortbread
cookies and iced chocolate-orange scones and whipped French
vanilla cream cakes and sugary butter tarts: November
through December was about whipping and folding and blending
and sampling. Though she'd spent only one semester at pastry
school so far, Dakota was eager to try out the new
techniques she'd learned.
Still, she hadn't stopped to consider how it might
feel to roll out crust, to pare fruit, to make a meal, back
in what was her childhood home, as she adjusted her bulging
backpack, groceries in each hand, and climbed the steep
stairs two floors up to Peri's efficient little apartment
situated one floor above the yarn shop her mother had
started long ago, the tiny shop—the shelves packed to
bursting with yarns fuzzy, nubbly, itchy, and angel-soft,
its walls a kaleidoscope of cocooning pastels and luxurious
jewel shades—that Georgia Walker had willed to her only
child and that Dakota had, finally, come to truly
appreciate.
The white-painted cupboard door creaked loudly as she
opened it, surprising not because of the unpleasant volume
but because Dakota realized, in that moment, she had
forgotten the quirks of this particular kitchen. At the same
time, overflowing bundles of yarn spilled—burgundies and
cobalts, wools and acrylics, lightweights and
doubleknits—from the shelves, tumbled to the grocery bags
she'd just set on the counter, and then bounced to the
linoleum tile floor below. Almost as an afterthought, a tidy
pile of plush plum cashmere dropped noiselessly through the
air, just missing her head, and landed directly into the
small stainless sink.
"This isn't a kitchen!" cried Dakota, reaching out her
arms as widely as was possible in her heavyweight white
winter coat, trying to hug yarn and food and prevent all of
it from rolling off the edge. "It's a storage facility!"
She hesitated. What she'd wanted was simply to find a
bowl, something in which to pile up the apples she'd
purchased, and she'd approached Peri's compact galley
kitchen in the apartment above the Walker and Daughter yarn
shop as if on automatic pilot. Distractedly running through
a to-do list in her mind, Dakota lapsed into an old pattern
and went directly to where her mother stored the dishes once
upon a memory, back when the two Walkers lived in this same
walk-up. And what did she find? Knitting needles of all
sizes and woods stacked in the flatware drawer and oodles of
yarn where the dishes ought to be, raining down from the
cupboards. She wasn't sure she ought to risk a peek in the
oven now that Peri lived here.
It had been a long time since she'd cooked in this
location, making oatmeal, orange and blueberry muffins for
her mother's friends, the founding members of the Friday
Night Knitting Club.
"Seven years," marveled Dakota, her voice quiet though
no one else was around. Seven years since she'd puttered
around this kitchen after homework, smashing soft butter and
sugar together as she contemplated what tidbits would go
inside the week's cookies.
"Careful now," murmured Georgia, the shop ledger
in front of her on the cramped kitchen table. "Maybe don't
put in everything that's on the shelf. We went through two
bags of coconut last week."
"Uh, those muffins were my best ever, Mom," said
Dakota, prancing around in a victory dance on the worn
linoleum. "The supreme moistness I've been searching for!
You can't stand in the way of a chef."
"As long as this chef remembers that we're on a
budget," Georgia said mildly, brushing away some bits of
eraser from the page before her. "I think I created a
monster the afternoon I taught you how to measure flour."
"Okay, Mom," said Dakota, sliding into a chair at the
table. "Should I not make so much?"
Georgia's eyes crinkled as she regarded her lively
daughter, whose ponytailed hair was falling loose from the
neon-pink scrunchie she'd knitted herself.
"Never stop," she said, gently tugging her daughter's
hair. "Don't give up something you love just because there's
an obstacle. Find a way to work around it. Be open to
something unexpected. Make changes."
"Like what?" "Like if you run out of sugar," she
said. "Use honey." "I did that last week!" "I know," said
Georgia. "I was proud of you. We Walker girls are creative.
We knit. You bake. But above all, we never, ever give in."
Dakota surveyed the room. The kitchen was almost a
relic, one of the few places in the apartment undamaged by
last year's flooding, the bathroom down the hall being the
source of the water that ruined the yarn shop in its
previous incarnation but reminded all of them—and especially
Dakota—of the importance of a mother's legacy. The store
reopened soon after with a clean-and-simple style, with
basic shelves for the merchandise, though she and Peri
planned a massive remodel to begin in the not-too-distant
future. That was all they'd talked about for months. The
idea was to devote the shop space to a boutique for Peri's
couture knitted and felted Peri Pocketbook handbags, and to
adapt the first floor from a deli to a knitting café.
Dakota's father, James Foster, was in charge of the new
architecture but—due to frequent changes from his, ahem,
difficult clients—hadn't finalized the drawings. It was a
grand plan, a vision that required Dakota to hurry up and
graduate from culinary school. Peri had been keeping
everything under control for a long while, and the strain
was showing.
"I don't want to miss my moment, Dakota," Peri
reminded her, though she admitted she wasn't sure what that
moment might be. Indeed, as Dakota grew older and struggled
to keep her schedule in check, it had gradually begun to
dawn on her how much Anita and Peri and even her father had
worked tirelessly to fulfill her mother's dream of passing
the store to Dakota. And even though Peri had a small
ownership stake, even though Anita had helped out
financially eons ago when Georgia bootstrapped her shop into
being, even though James was her dad, everyone's sacrifices
of time and energy belied self-interest as motivation.
Amazing, truly, to know that one woman—her mother, who
always seemed just so regular and everyday with her
reminders to zip up jackets and sleep tight—had the grace of
spirit to inspire such devotion.
Still, changes were coming all over, it seemed. Since
leaving the V hotel chain, James's focus had been on his own
architectural firm. Unfortunately, business wasn't exactly
booming. The knit shop was also facing smaller revenues this
quarter. Dakota didn't see the adventure in uncertainty. Too
much change, she knew, could come to bad ends.
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