The Knitting Sutra
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15
Ratings1
Average rating4
"The purpose of meditation is to quiet the mind so that it can sink down into contemplation of its true nature. You cannot stop your mind by an act of will any more than you can stop the beating of your own heart. Some cultures describe mind as a drunken monkey, reeling from place to place with no rhyme or reason. Like meditation/ knitting calms the monkey down....I believe that in the quiet/ repetitive, hypnotic rhythms of creating craft, the inner being may emerge in all its quiet beauty. The very rhythm, of the knitting needles can become as incantatory as a drumbeat or a Gregorian chant." -- from The knitting Sutra Knitting as prayer? Craft as spiritual path? In this wonderfully allusive story of the quest to master a craft, Susan Gordon Lydon's love of knitting and her search for spiritual insight become powerfully and lyrically intertwined. Lydon's journey begins when she knits a turquoise chenille sweater to help a broken bone in her arm "knit." In pursuit of a perfect silver button for her sweater -- and a medicine man for her arm -- she ends up on a Navajo reservation where a community of women live by the proceeds of their craft in a unified cycle of livelihood, art, and spirituality. They remind Lydon of the women on the Shetland Islands who developed classic knitting patterns and of the women who gather at her local yarn shop. From old-fashioned quilting bees to the hundreds of knitters who communicate on the Internet, she recognizes in craftspeople the confluence of self, community, creativity, ritual, and the urge to beautify the everyday. Each new knitting project she begins and every new skill she masters bring her closer to serenity and insight that have sometimes eluded her through years of spiritual explorations. In one passage, her arm healed and her passion for knitting rekindled, Lydon finds herself selling old books and clothes to buy a particularly extravagant yarn. The red sweater it becomes represents the lessons in daring and self-trust she learns while crafting it. Even a bout with cancer ("I particularly didn't want to die because I wanted to finish my Alice Starmore sweater") and the hiatus from knitting a tendinitis diagnosis demands guide her to take the lessons she has learned from knitting -- sitting still, focusing the mind, asking for help -- and apply them to the rest of her life. Dedicated to "all the women who knit too much," Lydon's rich insights will delight and inspire all who seek the extraordinary in the everyday.
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Being interested in mindfulness and on the verge of learning to knit I was pleased that there were actually books on the subject. Initially I thought this one was the bad one of the bunch I ended up picking it up first since I don't own any knitting supplies and this is the only knitting book that doesn't actually have any instruction.What you get is a memoir of a period in Lydon's life where she found the act of knitting bringing her to a mindful state. From my experience in making repetition a part of artwork I can attest that Lydon is on to something here. She describes scenes from her recent past and relates it to the ancient craft of knitting, mostly by telling of how different cultures understand the act of weaving and knitting and how it relates to their spiritual side. I'm on the verge of giving it three stars but honestly the advice is good advice, it's just that the way it was written felt a little schmaltzy. My hunch is that if you made it through [b:The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity 615570 The Artist's Way A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity Julia Cameron http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1176346423s/615570.jpg 2210934] or [b:Writing Down the Bones 44905 Writing Down the Bones Freeing the Writer Within (Shambhala Pocket Classics) Natalie Goldberg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170271469s/44905.jpg 937841] then this will be a breeze and you may enjoy it.
