Lydon, Susan G.

A feminist writer launched by the counterculture of the 1960s who helped found Rolling Stone magazine, died of cancer July 15 2005 at a Boca Raton hospice. She was 61. Ms. Lydon, who lived in Oakland, Calif., was the author of three books, including the memoir Take the Long Way Home (1993) about her battles with drugs and The Knitting Sutra: Craft as a Spiritual Practice (1997), which addresses knitting as a form of meditation.

She was an editor and columnist for the Oakland Tribune before going on medical leave in late 2002. While majoring in history at Vassar College, the Bronx native met Yale student Michael Lydon. They married in 1965, the year she graduated. They moved to England, where Michael Lydon became a writer for Newsweek and Susan Lydon wrote for the magazine London Life.

They returned to the United States in 1967, arriving in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury in time for the full flowering of the counterculture in the "Summer of Love." Ms. Lydon was present at Golden Gate Park for the Human Be-In, the hippie celebration where Timothy Leary told the youthful masses to "turn on, tune in and drop out." She dropped out of graduate school at San Francisco State and began to write freelance articles about local rock bands.

Many of her assignments were for Sunday Ramparts, an offshoot of the radical journal Ramparts. She often wrote for its arts editor, Jann Wenner, who wanted to start a rock 'n' roll newspaper. He launched Rolling Stone in 1967. Journalism, even in the counterculture, was a lonely place for women. Ms. Lydon recalled responding with an expletive when Wenner asked her to type address labels. After refusing the menial role, she not only wrote reviews and articles, but served as an editor and production manager. "The very rhythms of the knitting needles can become as incantatory as a drumbeat or a Gregorian chant," Ms. Lydo

She left Rolling Stone after the birth of her daughter, Shuna, in 1968, as the women's liberation movement was beginning to stir. Ms. Lydon attended one of the first consciousness-raising groups, which drew women into the feminist movement through intimate discussions of their lives.

Some years ago, Ms. Lydon fell off a deck and down a flight of stairs trying to get a better look at a hummingbird. She wound up with a broken arm and shattered shoulder -- and a new appreciation of knitting. She picked up her needles and yarn to strengthen her arm and ease pain after the accident. The physical therapy gradually became a form of spiritual therapy.n wrote in The Knitting Sutra, a book that fascinated devotees of the craft despite its lack of a single pattern.In addition to her daughter, Ms. Lydon is survived by her mother, Eve Gordon of Delray Beach; two sisters, Lorraine Garnett of Virginia and Sheila Wolfe of Boca Raton; and a brother, Ricky Ian Gordon of New York City.