Spotlight & Giveaway: Close Knit by Jenny Colgan

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Jenny Colgan’s new release: Close Knit

Follow Gertie MacIntyre from knitting circle to air stewardess in this glorious and romantic summer novel set in Scotland’s windswept Northern isles, by beloved New York Times bestselling author Jenny Colgan.

In the northernmost reaches of Scotland, where a string of little islands in the North Sea stretches towards Norway, lives Gertie MacIntyre, a proud island girl by birth. Her social circle is small but tight: family and friends, particularly the women in her knitting circle. In the whitewashed cottages of their hometown, everyone knows everyone, and the ladies of the knitting circle know more than most. In a place of long dark winters and geographic isolation, the knitting circle is a precious source of gossip, home, laughter, and comfort for them all. And while she knits, Gertie’s busily plotting what to do with the rest of her life.

When Gertie develops a crush on Callum Frost, who owns the local airline, she dares herself to take a job as an air stewardess on the little plane that serves the local islands. Terrifying at first, the sixteen-seat puddle jumper also offers the first taste of real freedom she’s ever known. Will Gertie’s future lie in the skies? Or will she need to go further afield to find the adventure she craves?

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from Close Knit 

“It is what it is,” was what Jean Mooney said as Gertie, still with her head in romantic Highlanders of many years ago, came through the low front door, went upstairs to change out of her work tabard, and came face to face with thirty-two new flecked mohair mixed- color packs.
“Mum!” Gertie had yelled down in outrage. “I’m going to have to sleep on a bed of wool!” The cottage had a front room, with a large fireplace—the room itself was small, and the floor sloped, but the fireplace was lined with big logs purloined some time back from the shipyards. There had been a push a few years ago to get on the gas, but the urge had passed, and Gertie was glad. She liked to gaze into the dancing flames.
“That sounds nice!” returned Jean. “You’re hoarding.”
Jean sniffed. “I’m just being careful! Wool is getting expensive.” She glanced out of the back window, where several fields of sheep were cheerfully grazing the springing emerald grass, full
and rich after several weeks of heavy rainfall.
“Although I swear I cannot tell why as it only goes from over there to over here.”
“You’re hedging wool?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re going to sell it on to the wool shop if the price keeps going up.”
Jean and the Woman in the Wool Shop had a fabled enmity, lost to the mists of time.
t is what it is,” was what Jean Mooney said as Gertie, still with her head in romantic Highlanders of many years ago, came through the low front door, went upstairs to change out of her work tabard, and came face to face with thirty-two new flecked mohair mixed- color packs.
“Mum!” Gertie had yelled down in outrage. “I’m going to have to sleep on a bed of wool!” The cottage had a front room, with a large fireplace—the room itself was small, and the floor sloped, but the fireplace was lined with big logs purloined some time back from the shipyards. There had been a push a few years ago to get on the gas, but the urge had passed, and Gertie was glad. She liked to gaze into the dancing flames.
“That sounds nice!” returned Jean. “You’re hoarding.”
Jean sniffed. “I’m just being careful! Wool is getting expensive.” She glanced out of the back window, where several fields of sheep were cheerfully grazing the springing emerald grass, full
and rich after several weeks of heavy rainfall.
“Although I swear I cannot tell why as it only goes from over there to over here.”
“You’re hedging wool?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re going to sell it on to the wool shop if the price keeps going up.”
Jean and the Woman in the Wool Shop had a fabled enmity, lost to the mists of time.
“Again, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Gertie looked at it mutinously, closed the door to her bedroom, and came back downstairs.
“I’d almost think you were trying to get rid of me. Whilst also turning a tidy profit.”
“You think I want my beloved only child to move out and see a bit of the world and spread her wings and build a life for herself beyond a very small town? That’s ridiculous,” said Jean, as the kettle boiled.
“Huh,” said Gertie, frowning, even as the bell rang and the KCs hastened into the tiny hall, festooned with incremental school pictures of Gertie, her black soft curly hair wrestled into bunches or plaits, trussed up in wool.
“Hey, Gertie,” said Cara (or Tara, it was hard to tell when they had identically knitted bunnets on). Cara and Tara were twins who hated each other and yet had somehow dealt with this life- long animosity by choosing to spend vast amounts of time together, including most of their evenings. They both worked in the local council office and were elders at the kirk, where they bitched each other up nonstop to the minister, who considered it a mark of his own penance and saintly patience that he would let this endure, so it worked out pretty well for everyone. They knitted a lot of bright yellow bonnets for “the babies in Africa,” nobody ever daring to tell them that perhaps wooly hats weren’t currently top of the priority list for the booming countries of that continent; and if they were sad they had never had their own babies to knit for, they never said.
“What’s been going on in that big head of yours today?”
They were convinced Gertie’s tendency to drift off was a mark of her supreme intelligence rather than, as it had actually been, a terrible hindrance in her exams. Not that she minded the Scot- North particularly; the work wasn’t hard and the people were nice and she had plenty of time to vanish into her own dreams.
“Mostly how I’m going to build a nest in what used to be my room,” said Gertie.
Next through the door was Marian. Marian was a terrible knitter, because she had very large hands, and she wasn’t particularly good at doing her makeup either, being newer to it and everything, having been on the fishing boats for a very long time before coming to a certain realization about her true self, so no- body minded, and everyone had a mouthful for anyone in town who remarked, or seemed to indicate that they did mind, or had something to say about it, or even looked like they might. That worked out perfectly well for everyone apart from the occasional distracted passerby who hadn’t realized they were staring until it was too late, and they had Jean in their face, which was extremely unnerving at the best of times.
“Hey,” Marian said. “I heard there’s that new man in town again.”
Everyone’s ears pricked up and they turned and stared at Gertie, except for Majabeen who had just turned up. Majabeen had a fondness for beautiful Kaffe Fassett work, meticulously done. Everyone would have admired it more if she ever stopped talking about how wonderful her children and grandchildren were and how well they were doing. Whilst a certain amount of bragging was respectable, indeed expected—Marian’s daughter getting a promotion; the twins’ cousin getting his early parole—Majabeen’s children were always winning scholarships and awards and whilst it was amazing it was also very slightly exhausting. Majabeen pretended it was all a terrible burden, talking about how awful it would be if one of her grandchildren only became an orthodontist rather than a cardiologist. Majabeen thought Jean indulging Gertie’s fantasy life was ridiculous.
“Stop it, please,” said Gertie, burying her face in her knitting.
Whilst Jean favored mohair and extravagant tops with large knitted flowers stitched on “for interest,” Elspeth was Fair Isle all the way, in murky greens and blues; the twins stuck to yellow and Majabeen loved the vibrant jewel colors, all mixed together. Marian was more of a beginner, was also color-blind, and was valiantly opposed to girls in pink and boys in blue, so her choices tended toward the eccentric. The faces of the family who’d received as a moving-in gift an entirely black baby layette remained etched in everyone’s memories.
Gertie, on the other hand, loved subtle shades; palest blues and grays that matched the ever-changing sky; sometimes with a thin line of bright color—a gold, or a pale pink—that mimicked dawn on the horizon; earthy, soft tones that reflected the water and the countryside that had surrounded her whole life. In her deep fantasy world, she dreamed of her designs being feted, worn around the globe. In her actual world, it was mostly Jean complaining that she should “jazz things up a bit.”
Because knitting for Gertie was not just a way to produce things. It was so much more than that. It was how she self-soothed after a difficult day, when the boss was grumpy or the customers impatient. It was the way she indulged her creative side, which couldn’t happen when she was stacking shelves (although she was always the go-to for holiday displays); choosing the colors with infinite care; the weight of the wool, often light as thistledown; experimenting with, e.g., a 1940s shoulder, or a pillbox hat.
It was the joy of feeling something growing from her hands, entirely of her own creation. And the comfort of the familiar motion, learned at her grandmother’s knee; in/round/through and off.
If worried or stressed, opening her knitting bag and setting the weight of her needles in her hands, and launching into the soothing click-clicking rhythm always slowed her racing thoughts or quelled her agitation, leaving her imagination free to soar, to go where it would. Even, she occasionally thought, a little ruefully, if the agitation was caused by the other KCs, particularly when they were in the middle of one of their “Let’s Sort out Gertie’s Love Life!” phases.
“What new man?” asked Jean fussily. There were long discussions of every man who passed through their small town.
“Calum Frost is back,” said Marian, smug with knowledge. “He’s hanging round the airport again.”
“OOH!” said Jean to Gertie. “You should get down there. Brush your hair.”
“Don’t be stupid, Mum,” said Gertie. Calum Frost was a Norwegian aviation magnate who owned—amongst many other things—the tiny airline that ran out of Carso to the islands. He was funding MacIntyre Air after they’d lost a plane the previous summer, much to the displeasure of Morag MacIntyre, local pilot. Technically she—and Ranald, her grandfather—worked for Calum Frost, but she pretended she didn’t, and Calum was pretty good about it.
“Anyway, when would I need to get on a plane?” “You could get on a plane!” said Jean.
“It literally goes up the archipelago,” said Gertie. “To places where there is even less to do than there is here.”
“You could go to Glasgow!”
“I will, Mum,” Gertie replied, knowing this was the fastest way to get her mother to drop it and, sure enough, Majabeen soon launched into a long story about scholarships, which was extremely difficult to follow, and Gertie could stare into the fire, ac- companied only by the clack of needles, and lose herself . . .
It would be someone to make cozy socks for—nice and large, without presumptions; it’s nice to have a roomy sock. She dreamed of someone—someone whose face was fuzzy. They didn’t have to be terribly glamorous; she certainly wasn’t. But someone nice, just coming home at night, coming in out of the cold, into the cottage—no, nix that. SURELY she wouldn’t still be living in the cottage. Okay, well, maybe another cottage then, but all for them, with a nice layout and one of those nice glass extensions at the back she’d seen people get. And he’d come in from a freezing day, the wind flicking his nice hair sideways, into the cozy sitting room and there’d be some nice cock-a-leekie soup on the stove, and he’d just be so happy to see her and so happy to be home, and he’d put his arms around her waist whilst she was at the stove and say, “Honestly, I don’t know what I’d have done without that hat today,” and she would feel the cold coming off him, and turn round to welcome him home . . .
It didn’t feel like so much to ask. It felt a million miles away.

Excerpt. ©Jenny Colgan. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
 
 

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Meet the Author:

Jenny Colgan is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous novels, including The Christmas Bookshop, The Bookshop on the Corner, Little Beach Street Bakery, and Christmas at the Cupcake Café. Jenny, her husband, and three children live in a genuine castle in Scotland.

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