Knit picker

Stitchy McYarnpants only has eyes for one thing as she rigorously sifts through the piles of tattered clothes in the Garment District's $1.50 - a - pound department, and it doesn't take her long to locate it.

``Look at this," she says, freeing a hand-knit sweater from a small mountain of bad T-shirts and blouses fitted with Bea Arthur-size shoulder pads. The sweater has a label sewn into the neck that reads ``Specially handmade by Emma." ``Obviously some ungrateful grandchild put this in the wash and it shrunk. Poor Emma, I think this serves as a good warning to others : Don't knit for worthless ingrates," says Stitchy.

Emma's legend only grows as more hand-knit items -- including a pair of crocheted bikini bottoms crafted from an insanely itchy yarn -- are unearthed from the $1.50 - a - pound pile. Every sweater tells another part of her story, and Emma's tale evolves into that of chain-smoking, hard-drinking granny who crochets sweaters at a furious clip to sate her greedy descendents and pay off gambling debts. The silliness taking place at the Garment District in Cambridge is not entirely different from the entries that appear on McYarnpants' blog, and her recently published first book ``The Museum of Kitschy Stitches."

By day, McYarnpants is local computer programmer Debbie Brisson, but by night, she becomes a husband-neglecting, cat-shooing, yarn - hoarding knitaholic with a love of bad couture. There are a shocking number of knitting blogs on the Internet, but 36-year-old Brisson, who has been sewing, knitting, and crocheting since she was a tyke, is the demented queen of knitting humor blogs. She scours yard sales and eBay for old knitting pattern books from the 1950s through the 1970s. These pattern books are loaded with shots of awkward models grinning in ill-fitting crocheted dresses and hot pants -- fashions that were created out of nothing but granny squares and sheer pluck.

``I can pick on them because I'm a knitter myself, and I've made some pretty heinous things," she says, carefully guarding her haul of knit treasures. She plans to display the crocheted treasures on her book tour this fall.

Anyone with an Internet connection and way too much time on their hands can create a blog, but Brisson's site, www.stitchymcyarnpants.com , not only developed a cult following, it turned into a book after Philadelphia-based Quirk Books became smitten with blog entries such as ``Free to Pee, You and Me" and ``Emasculation Nation."

But this is where the conversation ends. Brisson has spotted her holy grail: a handknit sweater (not one of Emma's, however) with a horrific plunging neckline and angel sleeves -- exactly what Olivia Newton-John would have sported on ``The Captain and Tennille Show."

``This is the trifecta of bad knitting," she says. ``Bad yarn, bad color, and a terrible shape. It's perfect."