Q: What is the history of Shetland lace?
Shetland sheep produce especially warm and soft wool, better suited to knitting than weaving. Knitted wear was already important to the local economy by the sixteenth century, when natives traded stockings, caps and gloves to northern European merchants and fishermen. Lace knitting grew out of this tradition. In the nineteenth century, the height of the lace industry’s prosperity, gifts to England’s royal family paid off when Queen Victoria (herself a knitter) wore collars and stockings of Shetland lace, and lace patterns were printed in English magazines. In 1851 Shetland lace was displayed at the Great Exhibition at London’s Crystal Palace. By the early twentieth century, Fair Isle sweaters had taken over as the main commercial knitted product from the islands, and the demand for lace died off.
Q: Knitting has been very important to Megan’s life. What part has knitting played in your life? Have you ever belonged to a knitting group?
I’ve never belonged to a group. For me, knitting is a blissfully peaceful and solitary activity, but then I’m an introvert, so that fits me. My paternal grandmother was a knitter. She was incredible. Her stitches were so even (mine aren’t) they looked like they came out of a machine. She also never used a pattern. My mother also knitted, and she taught me. Three kids to raise, a full-time teaching job, and Mom managed to knit me beautiful sweaters! Once she even made a cable sweater for my Barbie (Mom, where did you find the time?). I need my hands busy when I’m listening to music or an audio book, or just letting my mind wander, and needlework is perfect for that.
Q: On to the characters in your book. Did Gillian exist or not?
You can decide! The shawl that shows up at the end could have been knitted by Megan’s mother, or it could have been the real one passed down. Maybe there was real magic and the box and shawl appeared in Megan’s father’s attic when Megan needed to see it. Maybe Fiona was altered by the shock and grief of losing Calum and imagined Gillian while she knit the shawl herself. There are many possibilities. Me, I’d love to believe the Shetland story as written.
Q: Why is Megan so sure Gillian isn’t real?
First, in a literal sense, because Gillian suddenly appeared in her mother’s stories when Megan had a difficult girl at school to deal with, and because her mother often told the Shetland stories as morality tales to fit Megan’s life. And of course the “magic” side of Gillian would not have held water for Megan.
Second, symbolically, the book is about Megan’s world expanding. She lived all over the country as a girl, but stayed very closed and small in her life, directed very inward. Her memories are more of knitting with her mother than the cities and towns around her. In fact, she often confuses where she lived at any given point. Her eventual opening up to believe in Gillian is part of her opening up to external experiences and aspects of herself that she denied for too long.
Q: Do David and Megan end up together?
I’ll leave that to you! But yes, I believe they do. I think David keeps Megan’s world from closing in on her and I think she keeps him humble. They’re a good match in temperament, too.
Q: What do you see as Elizabeth’s future?
In my mind Elizabeth is still going to need a few years to settle down and make peace with her mother and herself. In my original draft, Dominique was an overbearing jerk and she left him at the end of the book, but that was too many women leaving relationships, so I changed it. I think her process of maturation works better this way. I’m still not sure Dominique is perfect for her, but she loves him, and he definitely adores her. I do think she’ll go to college, and become a more mature and grounded person. Having career goals of her own will help their relationship too.
Q: Can you relate to Elizabeth’s aimlessness career-wise?
Yup. Until I started writing, when my first son was a baby, I had pretty much resigned myself to wandering from one job I didn’t much care about to the next. I had no career aspirations simply because nothing made me catch fire. Writing changed my life. Maybe Elizabeth will find something to catch her on fire. Truffles? That farmhouse in North Carolina? Being a bigger part of Dominique’s life and world? Something will. She’s too stubbornly enthusiastic and creative to remain down for long.
Q: Why truffles?
I must have come across an article about them—I didn’t realize they were being grown in the United States! I’m a foodie, so all things about food interest me, and I was fascinated. Truffles are why I set the story in North Carolina. The western mountains became the perfect place because of their beauty, but also because they seem in many people’s minds to be the opposite of ocean, which is where Megan and her ancestors come from. And truffles represent Elizabeth’s fancy life in New York, which she leaves, but which are still part of her in the form of Dominique, so she embraces them again at the story’s end.
Q: What about Ella’s future?
Ella will always land on her feet. I’m not worried about Ella. Watch out world, here she comes.
Q: Anything else you’d like to tell us?
Check out the information online about the Shetland islands! A truly fascinating place with a dramatic history. And if you’re already a lace knitter or brave enough to try, I’d love to hear from you. E-mail me through my website, www.IsabelSharpe.com.
About the Author
ISABEL SHARPE is the author of As Good As It Got and Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakthrough. She lives in Wisconsin.
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Also by Isabel Sharpe
AS GOOD AS IT GOT
WOMEN ON THE EDGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKTHROUGH
Credits
Cover photograph by Dougal Waters/Getty Images
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
KNIT IN COMFORT. Copyright © 2010 by Muna Shehadi Sill. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST AVON PAPERBACK EDITION PUBLISHED 2010.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sharpe, Isabel.
Knit in comfort: a novel / by Isabel Sharpe.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-06-176549-0 (pbk.)
1. North Carolina—Fiction. 2. Knitting—North Carolina—Fiction.
3. Lace and lace making—North Carolina—Fiction. 4. Women—North Carolina—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.H356645K59 2010
813'.6—dc22 2009052869
EPub Edition © April 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-199542-2
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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