craftgrrl | The Knitting Sutra: Craft as a Spiritual Practice by Susan Gordon Lydon (Reply)

i don't know if any of you have read this book.
it was pretty decent, i jst finished it.
it had a lot of good quotes.
if you want a good read, check it out.

quotes:

"creativity and inspiration are such mysterious processes, so much in the nature of gifts from the heavens, that the means we employ to find them are often bizarrely idiosyncratic. sometimes i feel a particular kind of depression where i just lose interest in everything i normally like. i've identified this state of mind as a hunger of the imagination, my imagination's overwhelming and unsatisfied need for something to seize onto for inspiration. in my case this ennui can be cured most effectively by a visit to a fabric or yarn store. i much prefer to assemble the materials for a project, to fantasize and envision how it will look when it is completed, than to procure the finest finished product, though i occasionally have come across knitting or beadwork so fine that i longed with all my heart to possess it. this is the positive aspect of the craft conundrum i described before: the work lives and thrives in your imagination for a long time, providing pleasure and excitement far beyond its usefulness when finished.”

“so I’m forced to suspend time. To work outside of time. To forget that time exists. On a subconscious level I have to believe I have all the time in the world, or I wouldn’t be able to begin. And something happens when I enter that fallacy. Time, which is fractal, stretches out, and I begin to experience eternity. There is something about that spacious expansion that promotes the growth of large-scale thinking, that enables one to rise above the petty stresses of everyday life. Viewed from a certain perspective, time is the only real luxury we have.”

[haha, this one reminds me of craftgrrl]
“knitters enjoy a strange obsession. Possibly, our enthusiasm can be communicated only from one to another. I have found on the internet that knitters are so overly fond of sharing their joy that one subscribes to a list at one’s peril. The volume of messages generated by the community of knitters on the internet is nothing short of astonishing, especially considering the juxtaposition of such an ancient form of craft with such a modern form of technology.”

[for those of you with copyright issues]
“in the old days when needlework was taught in families and schools, there was always an older and more accomplished knitter you could go to with your questions and concerns. All crafts are passed not in oral but in tactile tradition where you learn with your hands and by your own mistakes and the better example of someone else; as a rule it is difficult to learn a craft from books. Just as creativity is one of the highest forms of human expression, it seems equally true that it is our duty to pass on what we know to future generations so that the precious knowledge, hard-won, and painstakingly accumulated, will not be lost.”