We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,737,300.59 | Books Available: 736,254 | Members Online: 228

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - The Knitting Sutra: Craft as a Spiritual Practice

The Knitting Sutra Craft as a Spiritual Practice
Author: Susan G. Lydon

"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... more » 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 SutraKnitting 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.

ISBN-13: 9780062512024
ISBN-10: 0062512021
Publication Date: 2/14/1997
Pages: 176
Rating:

Currently 3.2/5 Stars.

3.2 stars, based on 16 ratings

Publisher: HarperSanFrancisco
Book Type: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Read All 2 Book Reviews of "The Knitting Sutra Craft as a Spiritual Practice"

Genres:

Religion & Spirituality >> Buddhism >> Sutras
Religion & Spirituality >> Worship & Devotion >> General
Religion & Spirituality >> Worship & Devotion >> Inspirational
Crafts, Hobbies & Home >> Crafts & Hobbies >> General
Crafts, Hobbies & Home >> Crafts & Hobbies >> Knitting

Back to the Top ↑

Search - The Knitting Sutra: Craft as a Spiritual Practice

Loading...