Kate Jacobs

The Friday Night Knitting Club
Kate
Jacobs

BERKLEY BOOKS,
New York

Contents

MORE PRAISE FOR The Friday Night
Knitting Club
.
3

the gathering
.
4

one
5

two
.
14

three
.
34

casting on
.
45

four
.
45

five
.
58

six
.
74

seven
.
82

doing the gauge
.
89

eight
89

nine
.
94

ten
.
103

knit and purl
111

eleven
.
111

twelve
.
117

thirteen
.
122

fourteen
.
132

fifteen
.
135

sixteen
.
142

mastering a complicated stitch
.
145

seventeen
.
145

eighteen
.
150

nineteen
.
160

twenty
.
170

twenty-one
.
176

ripping it out
184

twenty-two
.
184

twenty-three
.
190

twenty-four
.
199

twenty-five
.
204

starting again
.
207

twenty-six
.
207

twenty-seven
.
220

twenty-eight
225

twenty-nine
.
229

binding off
.
236

thirty
.
237

thirty-one
.
244

sewing it all together
.
250

thirty-two
.
250

thirty-three
.
257

thirty-four
.
259

wearing what you've made
.
263

thirty-five
.
263

thirty-six
.
265

darwin's first scarf!
268

dakota's oatmeal, blueberry &
orange muffins
.
270

acknowledgments
.
271

the friday night knitting club
by kate jacobs
 
READERS GUIDE
..
271

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are
the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events,
or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control
over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites
or their content.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly
as written. The publisher and author are not responsible for your specific
health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher and
author are not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained
in this book.
Copyright © 2007 by Kathleen Jacobs.
Readers Guide copyright © 2007 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed
or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or
encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights.
Purchase only authorized editions.
BERKLEY is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The "B" design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
ISBN: 1-4295-9711-9
The Library of Congress has catalogued the G. P. Putnam's Sons edition as
follows:
Jacobs, Kate, date.
The Friday night knitting club / Kate Jacobs.
1. Mother and daughters—Fiction. 2. Female friendship—Fiction. 3. Knitters
(persons)—Fiction. 4. Knitting—Fiction. 5. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9199.4.J336F75 2007 2006037337
813. 6—dcc22

MORE PRAISE FOR The Friday Night
Knitting Club

"Knitters
will enjoy seeing the healing power of stitching put into words. Its simplicity
and soothing repetition leave room for conversation, laughter, revelations, and
friendship—just like the beauty shop in
Steel Magnolias
."

—
Detroit
Free Press

"[A]
winning first novel."

—
Booklist

"If
you like to write or read or knit, your first reaction to
The Friday Night
Knitting Club
may be pure jealousy…Readers will come to root for nearly
everyone in the sweetly diverse cast of characters."

—
Concord
(NH) Monitor

"What
begins as an unlikely hodgepodge of women soon evolves into an unbreakable
sisterhood as the characters learn from each other's differences and bond over
their love of knitting."

—
Vogue
Knitting

"A
Steel
Magnolias
for the twenty-first century."

—
Kirkus
Reviews

"Poignant
twists propel the plot and help the pacing find a pleas ant rhythm."

—
Publishers
Weekly

"A
really great story."

—
Marie
Claire

"Celebrates
the power of women's independence and is essentially an urban counterpart to
How
to Make an American Quilt
."

—
New Statesman

the gathering

Choosing your wool is dizzying with potential:
The waves of colors and textures tempt with visions of a sweater or cap (and
all the accompanying compliments you hope to receive) but don't reveal the hard
work required to get there. Patience and attention to detail make all the
difference. Also willingness. Challenge keeps it interesting, but don't select
a pattern that is too far beyond you. Always select the best yarn you can
afford. And use the type of needle that feels best in your hand; I always used
bamboo. Even now, it still seems unbelievable to me that by pulling together a
motley collection—the soft yarn, the sharp needles, the scripted pattern, the
smoothing hook, the intangibles of creativity, humanity, and imagination—you
can create something that will hold a piece of your soul. But you can.

one
Open Tuesday to Saturday,
10 A.M.—8 P.M. No exceptions!

The hours of
WALKER AND DAUGHTER: KNITTERS
were
clearly displayed in multicolored letters on a white sandwich board placed just
so at the top of the stair landing. Though Georgia Walker—usually preoccupied
with closing out the till and picking up the strays of yarn on the floor—rarely
made a move to turn the lock until at least eight fifteen…or later.
Instead, she sat on her stool at the counter, tuning out the traffic noise from
New York's busy Broadway below, reflecting on the day's sales or prepping for
the beginner's knitting class she taught every afternoon to the stay-at-homes
looking for some seeming stamp of authentic motherliness. She crunched the
numbers with a pencil and paper, and sighed. Business was good, but it could
always be better. She tugged at her long chestnut curls. It was a habit from
years ago she'd never quite grown out of and by the end of each day her bangs
often stood straight up. Once the bookkeeping was in order, she'd smooth out
her hair, brush off any bits of eraser from her jeans and soft jersey top, her
face a bit pale from concentration and lack of sun, and stand up to her full
six feet (thanks to the three-inch heels on her well-worn brown leather cowboy
boots).
Slowly she would walk around the shop, running her hands lightly over the piles
of yarn that were meticulously sorted by color—from lime to Kelly green, rust
to strawberry, cobalt to Wedgwood blue, sunburst to amber, and rows and rows of
grays and creams and blacks and whites. The yarn went from exquisitely plush
and smooth to itchy and
nubbly
, and all of it was
hers. And Dakota's too, of course. Dakota, who at twelve frequently ignored her
mother's instructions, loved to cross her dark eyes and savor the fuzzed-out
look of the colors all merging, a rainbow blending together.
Dakota was the store mascot, one of its chief color consultants (more
sparkles!), and frankly, a pretty damn good knitter already. Georgia noticed
how quickly her daughter was making her projects, how particular she was
becoming about the tautness of her stitches. More than once she'd been
surprised to see her not-so-little-anymore girl approach a waiting customer and
say with confidence: "Oh, I can help you with that. Here, we'll take this
crochet hook and fix that mistake…" The shop was a work in progress;
Dakota was the one thing she knew she'd done exactly right.
And yet when Georgia finally went to turn out the lights of her shop, she would
often be met by a potential customer, all furrowed brow and breathless from
dashing up the steep stairs to the second-floor shop, the seemingly innocuous
"Can I just pop in, for a quick minute?" out of her mouth before
Georgia could even insist they were done for the night. She'd open the door a
little wider, knowing all too well what it was like to juggle work and kids and
still try to sneak in a little something for herself on the side: reading a
book, coloring her hair in the bathroom sink, taking a nap. Come in, get what
you need, she'd say, putting off the short climb to her sparsely decorated
apartment on the floor above. She never let any straggler stay past nine on a
school night, though, because she needed to shoo her Dakota from the corner
desk where she did her homework. But Georgia would never turn away a potential
sale.
She'd never turn away anyone at all.