When I began to knit as an adult - after several false starts during childhood - I was immediately curious about the lives of knitters and how I could study history, in particular women's history, by way of knitting. At the time - this was in the late 1980s - there were fewer knitters (certainly fewer knitters who were "outed") and definitely fewer books about knitting being published than there are today. While I was curious about the history of knitting in the United States, I found it easier to explore its history in countries outside of it, in places like the Shetland Islands in Scotland and the Orenburg region of Russia. In part, this was because I had a fairly serious case of wanderlust at that time and was always eager to travel abroad, and in part because information about these foreign knitting traditions was more readily available. I loved to knit but I had the feeling that most of our society regarded it as inconsequential, as not having any significant impact on American lives.

I distinctly remember lying on my bed in my small New York City apartment searching for stories about knitters in the United States in Richard Rutt's 1987 book, A History of Hand Knitting - only to be faced with this statement: "Information about the history of hand knitting in the United States is hard to find." A few years later I happened upon a paperback copy of No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting by Anne Macdonald (first published in 1988); this book gave me my initial glimpse into domestic knitting history, was certainly more helpful than Rutt's book, and whetted my appetite for more. But more was slow in coming.

Having been asked to write a foreword for Knitting America, I have had the opportunity to review this comprehensive text before publication. While it doesn't surprise me that Susan Strawn has created such a fascinating book - when I first met her, when we both worked for Interweave Press (she as an illustrator and stylist and I as an editor), she immediately impressed me with her commitment to excellence and her eagerness to take on new challenges - I am still in awe of the scope of her accomplishment here. After leaving Interweave, she earned her Ph.D. and clearly honed her research skills.

What I find most fascinating about this book is how Susan has placed the history of knitting within the context of American history, so we can clearly see how knitting is intertwined with such subjects as geography, migration, politics, economics, female emancipation, and evolving social mores. She has traced how a melting pot of knitting traditions found their way into American culture via vast waves of immigration, expanded opportunity for travel, and technology. She has shown how knitting has provided solace during difficult times, from the Great Depression to the days following September 11. She has documented the significant contributions knitters have made during periods of war, especially the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World Wars I and II. She has demonstrated how the first American knitters created clothing that was crucial for survival, how knitting evolved into a symbol of feminine propriety and then later into a symbol of rebellion, how some American women used knitting as a means of earning income at times when other types of employment were not open to them, and how today, while it can still be a method of earning a living, it has become primarily a mode of creative expression. Along the way she illustrates this history with a plentiful supply of visual imagery (much of it rarely seen before), including reproductions of paintings, photographs, and/or advertisements on nearly every page.

I know that in the years to come I will refer back to this book many times, rereading certain passages and marveling over images - maybe the Pacific Northwest Tulalip Indian on page 50 or Grace Coolidge, the only first lady known to have entered her knitting in county fairs, on page 111, or the song lyrics for the musical sensation of the 1910s "Listen to the Knocking at the Knitting Club" on page 74, or the advertisement from 1918 on page 87 for the newest invention (and one of my favored tools), the circular knitting needle. I know that Susan, now a committed and generous scholar, hopes that her book will inspire other writers to delve even deeper into the rich topic of American knitting history. I believe that will happen. But first we must take a bit of time to appreciate her validating work and to thank her for sharing it with us.

Foreword to Knitting America, Zenith Press, ISBN 0760326215 . All rights reserved.