Knitting Heaven and Earth: Healing the Heart with Craft

by Susan Gordon Lydon

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.

Genres: Knitting, Memoir, Nonfiction, Crafts

256 pages, Paperback

First published June 14, 2005

About the author

Susan Lydon was an American writer, journalist and feminist. She is the author of a memoir about her drug abuse and recovery, two books on knitting and the 1970 essay "The Politics of Orgasm," as well as numerous articles from her work as journalist.

Born in the Bronx, New York, and raised on Long Island, she graduated in history from Vassar College in 1964. She met and married Michael Lydon in 1965, and the two moved to England, where they began careers in journalism. They returned to the United States in 1967. After joining women's consciousness-raising groups, Lydon became a feminist. She penned critiques of male-centered sexuality and divorced her husband in 1971.

Through the 1970s and '80s, Lydon suffered an addiction to drugs, a journey detailed in her 1993 memoir Take the Long Way Home. In the later part of the '80s, she developed a passion for knitting, which became the subject of two nonfiction works.

She died of cancer at 61.

Reviews

[Kerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Knitting Heaven and Earth is an exploration of crafting as a healing force as told by Susan Gordon Lydon, the author of The Knitting Sutra. In it, Lydon discusses crafting (but most specifically, knitting) as an activity strongly associated with life’s transitions. She wrote about knitting for birth and knitting for illness, heartbreak and death.

In one section of the book, the sweater she knitted as gift for a dear friend struggling with mental illness and depression became a comfort to those left behind when the friend committed suicide. In another, lace shawls chronicled the author’s attempt to open herself up to love and her pain as the dysfunctional relationship cycled through numerous breakups, betrayals and reconciliations. Lydon knitted as she sat by her father’s deathbed. As his death was considered imminent for years before he actually passed, Lydon has the opportunity to create the relationship with her father that she had lacked throughout her early life, crafting memories and connection with him. The sweaters that she made during this time, recorded her experience, helped her process her grief and acted as a tangible remnant of her last few months with her father and the relationship they had forged together. Lastly, Lydon wrote about her battle with breast cancer, which came after an earlier bout of cancer. While she turned more to needlepoint during her treatments than knitting, she wrote movingly of crafting, of creativity and its ability to sustain, comfort and rejuvenate us. At the closing of the book, having been told that the cancer had metastasized to her liver, she wrote both of the comfort of crafting to see her through whatever was to come and the legacy that it would leave if she should not survive. The book leaves her story there but a search on the internet revealed that she passed away shortly after the book was published. This added an even stronger emotional punch to a book that had reduced me to tears at several points.

As in The Knitting Sutra, there were moments in the book that will serve as food for thought and inspiration for me. Two such highlights are:

“I no longer ask myself why it is so absolutely soothing to me to ply a needle through fabric, in the same repetitive motion. The Mexican mural painter, Diego Rivera said he painted because that was what he did. He was like a tree that bears a certain type of fruit; in his case the fruit was paintings.

I am a tree that bears needlework and writing. It’s just what I do. “

And

“I knit and I wonder. Is God a knitter, a craftsperson, a seamstress? Did (S)He create the vast oceans with a sweep of the hand of patiently construct them one drop at a time?”

Knitting Heaven and Earth is a very personal story. It is frank and unblinking as the story of one crafter’s life and experience, a more intimate and accessible book than The Knitting Sutra. On a personal note, it really brought some of my emotional issues and history and its connection to my own knitting and crafting to the surface and will stay with me for some time.

[Knitology]

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.

[Krissy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an extremely personal read. At times, I felt as if I was reading the author's private journal. The parallels between her life and things that have happened to me in the past year hit very close to home. Reading it was very cathartic. I was said to learn that the author passed away in 2005.

[Suzanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't realize the author died so soon after this was published, which made my whole thought process on the book change. It's sad and more about coming to terms with mortality than about knitting. Susan Lydon was a co-worker of my mother's at one point, but I never remember meeting her. It made the book seem a little bit personal.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this when my mother was dying from cancer. I knit a lot and it touched me when the author spoke of knitting certain things for certain occasions and how that item can bring back so many memories.

[Melissa]

I really enjoy Susan Gordon Lydon's writing, and the honesty with which she tells about her journey.

[Martha · Rating 4 out of 5]

struck me to the core

[Ami Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was so sad I almost couldn't get through it.

[Leslie Jem · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too New Age-y for me.

[Camellia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good read