First Night of Deborah Newton Class

We had the first night of Deborah Newton's Finishing Class yesterday. More than once during the afternoon, she declared "I LOVE finishing sweaters!" and nobody could doubt her sincerity. She may even have won a few converts to her way of thinking. In the above photo are Deborah, Helen and Marilyn.

She got the class's attention right off the bat by revealing that she never blocks her work {sounds of jaws dropping}. She feels that blocking removes the individual knitter's hand in the work, taking away its "juiciness," as she likes to put it. At most, if she has some lacework that needs to be opened up, she'll give it a quick shot of steam followed by a little hand primping. (She demonstrated this for the class.)

During the course of a fascinating two hours, she pulled out some unassembled sweaters --coming soon to a magazine cover near you-- and described her thinking as she prepares to seam them up. This triggered a lively debate about seaming the body vs. knitting in the round, and sewn sleeves vs. picked-up sleeves. (Deborah is a firm believer in the role of seams to add structure to a sweater.)

At the end of the class, we worked on technique: how to avoid stairstepping during bind-off shoulder shaping, and how to make invisible shoulder seams. (in photo, working one-on-one with Caroline.)

It was a great class with another 2 hours to come tonight. Thank you, Deborah!