It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons

It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons

by Franklin Habit (Author)

Synopsis

It Itches: A Stash of Knitting Cartoons is an affectionate, humorous celebration of every aspect of the craft from buying (and hiding) massive quantities of yarn to wrestling with projects that go seriously awry to prescriptions for alleviating the stress brought on by holiday knitting to wreaking revenge on recipients of handknits who stuff them into the back of the bottom drawer. It Itches is the first of its kind to mix cartoon humor with short essays on knitting.

Franklin Habit is known for his witty writing and his New Yorker-style cartoons about knitting and life. His cartoons address the undeniable urge to purchase yarn, the (mostly) friendly rivalry between knitters, and the expression of love through yarn and needles. The book includes seventy-five cartoons, deftly rendered in pen and ink with watercolor wash, in addition to humorous short essays on various themes of the knitting life.

Every knitter will find himself or herself in this collection.

$3.42

Save:$8.45 (71%)

Quantity

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 112
Publisher: Interweave
Published: 12 Nov 2008

ISBN 10: 1596680938
ISBN 13: 9781596680937

Media Reviews

Oct 08

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.

* Yarn Market News *

Oct 08

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.

* Yarn Market News *
Author Bio
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 startled friends and relations. In February 2005, 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 on the Internet, with mentions in publications as diverse as Knit 1 and The Advocate. On an average day, upwards of 2,000 readers worldwide tune in for a mix of essays, cartoons, and the continuing adventures of Dolores the Sheep. In response to reader demand, The Panopticon spawned its own online shop in October 2005. Franklin's publishing experience includes writing lifestyles features for the Boston Phoenix, reading his own essays for the knitting podcast Cast On, and writing for Yarn Market News. He contributed to the premier issue of MenKnit, an online magazine for male knitters (menknit.net) and designed (and earned) the Gold Medal for the 2006 Knitting Olympics organized by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the Yarn Harlot. He has recently embarked on a photography project entitled 1,000 Knitters, a long-term project to (surprise!) photograph a thousand knitters. These days, Franklin knits and spins in Chicago, Illinois, sharing a small apartment with an Ashford spinning wheel and colony of sock yarn that multiplies alarmingly whenever his back is turned.