Subversive Knitting

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Learning to Love in the face of Death

A review of Knitting Heaven and Earth by Susan Gordon Lydon

In July, a friend sent me an email to say, “Susan Gordon Lydon died about 10 days ago--feminist author, knitter, and writer-about-knitting . . . and apparently an aficionado of qiviut.”

I didn’t recognize the name, but the description of this intrepid knitter caught my attention and I immediately googled her name. The search led to an obit that said she had been a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine, the author of a seminal feminist article in the 1970s entitled, “The Politics of Orgasm,” and, more recently, the author of two knitting books, The Knitting Sutra and Knitting Heaven and Earth, the second of which had been published barely a month before the author died of cancer.

The combination intrigued me, so I went to Amazon to check out her books. (I don’t shop at Amazon because my editor told me that they have unfair policies that keep independent publishers from getting equal treatment on their site, but I use their search feature to browse books that I then order at my local bookstore.)

As I was skimming the excerpt from Knitting Heaven and Earth, I was jolted to attention when my own name popped into focus on the screen. In chapter 1, “Animal Comfort,” Susan talks about how she got started knitting a lace shawl with qiviut (musk ox wool), after reading an article I had written in the Fall 2003 issue of Interweave Knits. In her description of knitting a qiviut shawl, she weaves in truths about power of women’s friendships and the love and energy that get knitted into every stitch of our unique creations.

The book as a whole is described by the author in the introduction as being about “knitting and love” and also about “knitting and death.” A poignant memoir covering the last years of Susan’s life, the chapters are written with heartbreaking and hilarious candor. The author tells us about the loss of her father and a close friend, the discovery of new love as she gets to know her young godson, and the exhilaration, pain, and confusion of romance as she meets up with “the last of the Marlboro men” and decides that “some men should come with a warning.” Throughout the book, Susan grapples with her own failing health, as she struggles through three different types of cancer and tries to come to terms with

how to live in the face of death.

Although she had already had another form of cancer, and a biopsy on a benign lump in her breast, Susan went four years without getting a mammogram. Because she had fibroid cysts, she didn’t pay much attention to the lumpiness in her breasts, and even after finding “a slight redness on the skin” of one of her breasts, she procrastinated about going to the doctor. Finally, when the skin started to feel strange, she made an appointment and began her journey though diagnosis, surgery, chemo, and radiation treatments. As she goes up and down through every emotion possible to experience,

it is her knitting and needlepoint

that keep her grounded and eventually

lead her to emotional healing.

I am honored that my own work was mentioned in such a beautiful book, and I was glad to learn that my article on qiviut inspired Susan to try out the luxurious yarn in the lace knitting that brought joy and comfort to the last years of her life. I only wish I could have met her and shared some knitting secrets. I am so glad she finished Knitting Heaven and Earth and left it to us all along with her other writings.

This month’s patterns are dedicated to Susan Gordon Lydon in gratitude for her generosity in sharing with us throughout her career as a writer and knitter, and above all, as a courageous woman.