Product Description

From the author of the modern classic The Knitting Sutra comes an inspiring and colorful narrative on knitting through one’s darkest hours.

Susan Gordon Lydon’s groundbreaking book The Knitting Sutra offered a new way for knitters to look at their craft—as a healing and meditative endeavor instead of a granny hobby or an indulgent pastime. The first book without knitting patterns to capture the knitting audience, it has been widely imitated, but no other book has endured so well.

With Knitting Heaven and Earth, Lydon again breaks new ground, this time following the emotional ties that become bound up in her handicrafts when a series of wrenching events—a heartbreaking romance, the death of her father, a devastating diagnosis of breast cancer—leave her reeling. Through it all, Lydon finds new reserves of strength in knitting, in the skeins of sumptuous yarn and colorful thread that help her make sense of the trials of the heart.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #653601 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-14
• Released on: 2005-06-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
“This will surely become the breviary of knitters and needlepointers, a carry-along-everywhere book of inspiration and courage written in prose that is richly embroidered, colorful, weighty, and textured—like a comforting shawl.”—Sylvia Boorstein, author of Pay Attention, For Goodness' Sake

“Susan Gordon Lydon’s big heart, clear words, and naked honesty weave the overwhelming pain of life, love, friendship, and death with the comfort of ordinary moments, the texture of yarn, a walk in the woods, having lunch with a child.  She shows us how knitting helps us stay steady through it all.”
—Cyndi Lee, author of Yoga Body, Buddha Mind and OM Yoga in a Box

“Susan Lydon's writing makes me laugh and cry, often at the same time. She is a master of black (and biker) humor. When I finished this book, I started again on the first page.”
—Barbara Gates, author of Already Home: A Topography of Spirit and Place


“I love this book. Profound and practical, its heartbeat is on every page. Susan Gordon Lydon’s journey of spirit is filled with courage, sadness and joy, giving us an important reminder of how to find the sacred in everyday life.”
—Sue Bender, author of Plain and Simple: A Journey to the Amish

Review

“This will surely become the breviary of knitters and needlepointers, a carry-along-everywhere book of inspiration and courage written in prose that is richly embroidered, colorful, weighty, and textured—like a comforting shawl.”—Sylvia Boorstein, author of Pay Attention, For Goodness' Sake

“Susan Gordon Lydon’s big heart, clear words, and naked honesty weave the overwhelming pain of life, love, friendship, and death with the comfort of ordinary moments, the texture of yarn, a walk in the woods, having lunch with a child.  She shows us how knitting helps us stay steady through it all.”
—Cyndi Lee, author of Yoga Body, Buddha Mind and OM Yoga in a Box

“Susan Lydon's writing makes me laugh and cry, often at the same time. She is a master of black (and biker) humor. When I finished this book, I started again on the first page.”
—Barbara Gates, author of Already Home: A Topography of Spirit and Place


“I love this book. Profound and practical, its heartbeat is on every page. Susan Gordon Lydon’s journey of spirit is filled with courage, sadness and joy, giving us an important reminder of how to find the sacred in everyday life.”
—Sue Bender, author of Plain and Simple: A Journey to the Amish

About the Author
SUSAN GORDON LYDON is the author of Take the Long Way Home: Memoirs of a Survivor and The Knitting Sutra: Craft as a Spiritual Practice. She has written for numerous magazines, including The New York Times Magazine, Ms., Interweave, Knits, and Rolling Stone, which she helped found. She has also taught knitting retreats at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Lydon lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Customer Reviews

Tender, honest, wise.
As I was about halfway thru this book I learned that Ms. Lydon had died (July 15, 2005), which made reading the remainder of the book-mostly about her returning cancer-all the more poignant. I had eagerly awaited this book after enjoying her book,The Knitting Sutra, a couple of years ago, and for the most part I was not dissapointed. I was not as enamoured with the chapters about her unhealthy relationship with Billy, but that is probably because as a recovering co-dependent myself, they hit a nerve. But I savored so much of everything else in this little jewel of a book, and I will certainly miss Ms. Lydon's voice.

It is not a perfect book, but it is a very good one. Her style is gentle, honest, insightful, and wise. I made a lot of notes in my journal as I read this. I am not a knitter, but the message is universal to me as a crochet person, as it would be to any type of crafter. Writing about the connection of the outer effort to the inner self, craft as meditation, a centering tool, the journey not the destination-the core themes of this book-Ms. Lydon drew me in completely. I read it as a gift. And, of course I could relate to the lure of yet more yarn, another project, unfinished ones still crammed in closets, or piled up on the chair a friend is trying to find a way it sit on!

This book does not teach us to knit, it shows us how knitting (crochet, quilting, scrapbooking, etc.,)connects us to parts of ourselves we may have lost, to parts we need to understand and heal, and to parts we need to nurture while we are in the middle of the harsh stuff life can slam in our faces (cancer, the loss of a parent, etc.)

This is a book I will keep and read again. I am proud to own it, and it will sit on my shelf as one of my "paper teachers"-the books that taught me something and fed my soul as well as my mind.

Rest in deserved peace, Ms. Lydon. You are already missed!

Crafts and life
I'm a quilter, not a knitter, but I have experienced the calming nature of working with my hands. I also went through chemo with Susan, and was a member of the support group she talks about in this book. She writes so eloquently, and with such humor, about her life. Everyone I have given this book to has loved it, but it has a special place for me.

Pathetic, sad, awful: Knitting, an OCD for New Age co-dependents in rehab.
I must be the lone voice in the wilderness and say I couldn't stand this book. It is absolutely awful. I could only make it halfway through. The author is not wise--she flails helplessly in her life. Reading this book is like watching someone drown. When her useless boyfriend upsets her, instead of dumping him or doing something constructive, she meditates "to gain the perspective of eternity." In other words, she does nothing positive to improve the situation and just goes back to him. It's tedious to read about.

Her prose is terrible, full of meaningless statements like "Sometimes a piece of knitting is simply itself," or 1950s cliches like "I've never understood the male animal." She gives a bizarre description of how she lay face to face with her drug-addicted boyfriend and "the bones in the center of my chest seemed to open" and they exchanged energy "in almost a figure eight pattern." When she meditates on her pain, she realizes that she "belongs to another reality, a larger conciousness, a vast and fruitful emptiness of luminous blackness and primal light." Say wha? If that kind of New Age babble sounds meaningful and special and insightful to you, you will probably like this book. I think it is nonsense.