The truth is I have big dreams about knitting. I pin things I’d like to create on my Pinterest boards. I attend knitting classes at cute knit shops. I own books on knitting, multiple sets of needles, and lots of yarn.
The problem is I never actually knit. Every time I learn, it goes really well, but once I get home I never pick it up again.
I think the downfall is that I’d rather be writing or reading a book and those are not hobbies that go well with knitting. I don’t watch much TV so I can’t just sit on the couch and create. If I sit still long enough chances are I’ll fall asleep so I don’t actually know when I should knit.
But you know what I can do really well?
Read novels about knitters.
Knit the Season by Kate Jacobs is the third book in the Friday Night Knitting Club series. I read the first two books years ago and loved them–loved the community, loved the knitting, loved the setting, loved the people. So soon after I finished Knit Two, I bought Knit the Season.
But because it was a Christmas-themed book, I felt I couldn’t read it at any other time but the month of December. Which made total sense to me, but now that I type that sentence, I realize I’ve just given another prime example of my OCD tendencies. Exciting stuff.
I did feel it was meant to be when I had the opportunity to attend a knitting class and I happened to be reading Knit the Season a couple weeks ago. And that justified waiting to read the book (obvious just the rationalization of a lunatic).
This book follows the lives of the same characters as the other books: Dakota and her struggle to follow her dreams while keeping her mother’s love and legacy afloat, Lucie and Darwin and their babies, Peri’s struggle to live her dream–whatever that is–and keep her friends too, Anita’s desire to get married again even though it might be killing her adult children, and Catherine’s adventure of finding herself and, perhaps, a new husband.
I loved these characters in the first two books. I devoured those books, the storylines were fresh and the setting, New York City, made everything just a little bit more shiny.
But with this book, I didn’t feel the same magic. I didn’t care about the characters anymore, I couldn’t get into the book like I did the first two.
I wanted to love this book, but I couldn’t.
Maybe part of the problem was me. When I read the first two books, I was different. As a reader, I’ve noticed I’m changing and things I used to love don’t do it for me anymore. Maybe I’m a little more cynical. Or maybe it’s just that I have such a limited amount of time to spend reading books, that I expect and demand that they be good, life-changing books. And this one wasn’t.
It was just okay and fluffy and not important.
Which makes me sad, because I still love those first two books so much.
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