Todays post is a book Review

The Knitting Sutra: Craft as a spiritual practice

Author: The Late, Susan Gordon Lydon

   I have read the jacket on this book several times whilst browsing the craft section at my local Chapters Store.  It never really seemed to pique my interest.  Today I felt compelled to try it, and feeling adventurous, and not terribly worried over the expenditure of 20.00 of my hard earned dollars, i gave it a go.

   Yes, today.  I purchased this book mere hours ago and only now came up for air.  I found this book strangely compelling and wonderfully thought provoking in a very non obtrusive way.  Susan takes the reader through a brief history of her life, touching on how knitting had been there with her through some very key moments in her share of time.  I was at times deeply touched by her candid references to her former drug addiction, was wrenched with emotions when she wrote of overcoming her fight with cancer partly aided by the need to "see the end" of her Alice Starmore Faire isle sweater. 

   As a reader we get to briefly but deeply follow the authors recounting of how she transformed from a pattern dependant knitter with no sense of her own shape, to a  master knitter with the knowledge of a hundred thousand stitches confidently flowing through her fingers to create beautiful knitted works that came so much more naturally.   And all the while journeying to discover who she really was in life, and feel as comfortable with her body and spirt and she became with her knitting.

   A lovely and inspiring book, that is quite different from the mass produced "knit it in a weekend" offerings it shared shelf space with.   . 

Highly recommended.

This book is for all of those knitters out there who like me "work just a row or two" first thing in the moring while the coffee is still brewing,  and "just a row or two more" while fighting off sleep at the end of the day.   Knitting is in the core of what now defines who you are.  I may not have the time at this point in my life to breeze through projects as quickly as i would like, but I knit with a need to knit.  I even carry a project in my purse at all times.  I knit for the love of knitting. 

Just like you.

XOXOXOXOXOX

~Shannon