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THE GREAT CHRISTMAS KNIT-OFF
THE GREAT CHRISTMAS KNIT-OFF
Alexandra Brown
Releasing Oct 13th, 2015
Harper Collins
The perfect seasonal tale of how
laughter, friends and wacky Christmas sweaters can mend a broken heart.
Heartbroken after being jilted at
the altar, Sybil has been saved from despair by her knitting obsession and now
her home is filled to bursting with tea cozies, beanies, and sweaters. But,
after discovering that she may have perpetrated the screw-up of the century at
work, Sybil decides to make a hasty exit and, just weeks before Christmas, runs
away to the picturesque village of Tindledale.
There, Sybil discovers Hettie’s
House of Haberdashery, an emporium dedicated to the world of knitting and
needle craft. But Hettie, the outspoken octogenarian owner, is struggling and
now the shop is due for closure. And when Hettie decides that Sybil’s
wonderfully wacky Christmas sweaters are just the thing to add a bit of
excitement to her window display, something miraculous starts to happen…
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EXCERPT
CAT'S REVIEW
★★★★★
EXCERPT
PROLOGUE
Hettie Honey
picked up a lovely lavender lace weight that a customer had abandoned by the
till after pondering for what seemed like an eternity that, actually, it wasn’t
the right shade of lavender after all. She then walked across the shop floor of
her House of Haberdashery to repatriate the ball into its rightful place—a
wooden, floor-to-ceiling cabinet comprising twenty-four cubbyholes inset over
three shelves crammed with every color, ply and type of yarn imaginable. Hettie
smiled wryly, remembering the program she had listened to on the radio not so
long ago. Knitting! It was all the rage nowadays and she hoped it would finally
catch on in Tindledale, her beloved picture-postcard village and Hettie’s home
for the eighty-three years of her life to date. She ran the timber-framed,
double-fronted shop adjacent to the wisteria-clad roundel of the oast house her
father had built before she was even born.
Hettie lifted the tray on which
sat the last remnants of her afternoon tea; a cheese sandwich minus the crusts
because her teeth weren’t as strong as they used to be plus a pot of tea and a
pink iced finger that had only cost ten pence on account of being past its
best. Kitty, in the tearoom up on the High Street, had tried to give her the
bun for free, but Hettie hated taking charity, especially when she felt there
were other people in far more need. Hettie moved to the back of the shop, swept
the curtain aside and went through to the little kitchenette area. Years ago
this had been her mother’s sewing room, and the wooden Singer machine with its
rickety foot pedal still lived there, with a multitude of multicolored bobbins
all piled up high on the shelf behind it.
After
placing the tray on the draining board next to the age-veined Belfast sink and
carefully wrapping the crusts in plastic to dunk into her warming homemade soup
the following afternoon, Hettie picked up the picture frame on the mantelpiece
above the fi re and ran a finger over the faded black-and-white autographed
photo. She allowed herself an enormous sigh. She wasn’t usually one for
self-pity or hand-wringing, but another one of the letters had come this
morning, with FINAL DEMAND stamped across the top in ugly red type. Business
had been so slow these past couple of years, and now, with her dwindling
savings and pittance of a pension, she had come to realize that it was going to
take a darn miracle this Christmas for Hettie’s House of Haberdashery to remain
afloat come the new year.
There had been
talk of retirement; of closing down the House of Haberdashery; of putting her
feet up and going “into a home.” Hettie’s nephew, her brother Harold’s son and
last of the Honey family line, was all for it. On one of his rare visits, on
the pretext of seeing how she was, he’d told Hettie he was concerned about her
living on her own, that she needed the rest and that “it’s not like you’ve got that
many customers these days, is it?” He said he’d make sure she had her own
bedroom or at the very least, a twin sharer. “And besides, it might be nice for
her to have the company of people her own age.” He’d put forward a strong case
and had already contacted the council to inquire about a suitable place. But
Hettie wasn’t losing her marbles and she knew that what he was really after was
to bulldoze her beloved home—the oast house surrounded by a meadow of pretty
wild flowers, and the place where she grew up. There’s her cozy bedroom suite,
set upstairs in the roundel with its magnificent view of the valley, the lovely
farmhouse kitchen with the walk-in pantry, the sunroom, the snug—it’s got the
lot, and that’s on top of all her memories wrapped within its circular walls.
Not to mention her beloved little shop, right next door, crammed full of all
her favorite knitting and needlecraft goodies.
Then he’d be
able to get his hands on the land for one of his building projects. He’d told
her all about the one with ample parking and plastic windows that his company
had created in the town where he lived, over fifty miles away. Seventeen months
it had taken, he’d said, to fight all the objections from the local residents’
association, and he had puffed on about it for the entire hour of that tedious
visit. But Hettie isn’t ready to be written off; to be carted away to an old people’s
home like a nag to a glue factory, not when there is plenty of life still left
in her sprightly body. Besides, “going into a home” would mean leaving
Tindledale behind, and Hettie knows more than anything that this is where her
heart belongs. It always has, even when she’d had the chance of a different
life, far, far away.
"The Great Christmas Knit-Off" is the perfect read to start off the holiday season (ok - so it's a little early for that but still!) I absolutely adored the characters, the setting and the theme. It simply is a beautiful read that keeps the reader engrossed. Sybil, she's a real sweetie. Having hit some road bumps in her life, she decides to take a brief detour. And how lucky she was to detour to Tindledale and meet the wonderful residents of this small but quirky town. Hettie is a doll! She's the typical Grandma character that you cannot help but love. In my dreams, this is the perfect town to live in. Ms. Brown has incorporated so many aspects into this - there's fun and laughter but some sad moments too. She has truly captured the holiday spirit and the goodness in the hearts of people too. I adored this story and look forward to reading it again, as well as more of Ms. Brown's works. (received copy from Edelweiss for honest review).
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Alexandra Brown began her writing
career as the City Girl columnist for The London Paper - a satirical diary
account of her time working in the corporate world of London. Alex wrote the
weekly column for two years before giving it up to concentrate on writing
novels and is now the author of the Carrington’s books. Set in a department
store in the pretty seaside town of Mulberry-On-Sea, the series follows the
life, loves and laughs of sales assistant, Georgie Hart. The Great Christmas
Knit Off is Alex’s fourth book and is the first in a new series set in the
fictional village of Tindledale, following the lives of all the characters
there.
Alex lives in a real village near the
south coast of England, with her husband, daughter and a very shiny black
Labrador.
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