Knitting is booming! An old tradition made new, taken up by movie stars and teenagers and busy career women alike. There is something so soothing and stress-relieving as the needles click clack; you can absolutely feel the tension in the brain unwind.

My goal for the novel was to provide the reader with a bit of a respite by sharing the imaginary world of Walker and Daughter, a cozy knitting shop nestled in New York City's bustling Upper West Side. It is here that readers can put aside their cares, enjoying the company of single mom and store owner Georgia Walker, her young daughter Dakota, their grandmotherly friend Anita, and the handful of smart, funny, tough women who comprise The Friday Night Knitting Club.

Above all, I see this novel as a story of relationships; knitting serves as a metaphor for life and the club as a conduit to bring together a disparate group of characters. Each with specific challenges and hopes. And I think that when one is in a city as big and as busy as New York, it can be very easy to get lost in the crowd. That's how the yarn shop becomes, for each of the characters, a place of calm. They know they can just take a deep breath and let it all out when they're there. We all need a place like that, a group of chums who are in our corner. And so I drew on some very rich personal experiences because I’ve been very lucky in my own life to have friends like that. For example, I’m still very close with the same group of girls I met in elementary school in my small Canadian hometown. And I remain connected with the same bunch of women from my first job at Redbook magazine. It gets harder to see each other regularly because we live farther apart but we still make it a priority to get together. Why? Because true friendship is a rare thing, and something worth cherishing. So when I sat at my computer and wrote this novel, I took all of these things – the wealth of relationships in my life, the memory of my knitting grandmothers, and my love of New York – to build what I hope is the warm and welcoming world of The Friday Night Knitting Club.

I do hope you'll take a look.

Sincerely,