It Itches

Yarn Market News: A knit wit if ever there was one, the multitalented Habit has found a nice platform for his stitchy sensibility. In 75 cartoons and a handful of essays, he lovingly tweaks the knitter's psyche, from the compulsive hoarding of fiber to the obsessive need to cover everyone and everything we know in wool. Fans of the Panopticon blog won't see that bawdy ewe Dolores here, but plenty of the other watercolor-washed pen-and-ink drawings demonstrate a similar irreverence: Noah's wife trying to smuggle more than two sheep onto the ark, say, or a retiree in a Hawaiian shirt and bucket hat attempting to pick up a bikinied babe knitting poolside by telling her she reminds him of his dear old granny. The Lost Knitting Diaries of the Famous - including Jane Austen, Gertrude Stein and Nietzsche - are gems, as are the mobster, ecotourist and exercise-averse variations of Off Jumps Jack. If your ideas of a sweet bedtime story is "And then she bound off loosely on a wrong-side row, keeping all stitches in pattern, and they lived happily ever after," this is the book for you.

Writer, illustrator, and photographer Franklin Habit's first piece of knitting-a vaguely rectangular six-foot scarf-was produced during his student days at Harvard University in the 1990s. Until the widespread revival of the craft, he stitched in solitude, turning out a small but steady stream of mittens, scarves, and hats for startaled friends and relations. In February2005, inspired by the emergence of the online knitting community, he created The Panopticon (the-panopticon.blogspot.com). What began as a project diary is now one of the most popular knitting blogs, with mentions in publications as diverse as Knit 1 and The Advocate. Franklin's publishing experience includes writing lifestyles features for the Boston Phoenix, reading his own essay for the knitting podcast Cast On, and writing for Interweave Knits, PieceWork, Yarn Market News, and Knitty.com. Franklin knits and spins in Chicago, Illinois.

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