About

DSC_0219Faina Goberstein is a prolific knitwear designer, author, and a professional teacher.

She is the co-author of the bestselling books The Art of Seamless Knitting (Interweave, 2013) and The Art of Slip-Stitch Knitting (Interweave, 2015).

Faina collaborates with F+W and Interweave Press on the production of classes, webinars, and DVDs.

She is teaching live at the events like Vogue Knitting Live, Madrona Fiber Festival, at the retreats, local yarn shops and guilds.Faina is also teaching online classes on Craftsy.com:  Sizing Knitwear Patterns is one the most popular classes on Craftsy and her  class Slip-Stitch Colorwork: Mosaic & Beyond is new but has almost 3000 students already.

Watch Faina’s events calendar , become a member of her Ravelry group FGDesigns , and sign up for her monthly newsletter to keep up with her teaching and more.

If you met Faina, you would know that she is always up to something interesting. She loves to have fun and learn new things.

Growing up in Russia, Faina learned how to knit as a child from a neighbor. At that time in Soviet Russia there were only a handful of published books with patterns in them. If you knit a sweater from one of the books, you would end up wearing the same sweater as most of the knitters in the country. Who wants this? Many people were learning how to design a custom sweater from scratch.

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Volga river at Samara city

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Samara, Russia from the river

While getting her MS degree in Mechanical Engineering, Faina continued to be curious about knitting and designing knitwear. She attended a two-year course on couture knitwear design. There she learned about making flat patterns based on body measurements and how to modify them for different styles of garments. Much of it involved fashion, knitting techniques, and math, so it was right up her alley. She is still using most of what she learned at that time.

Faina’s interest in a wide variety of knitting techniques and stitch patterns is evident by looking at her designs and topics of her classes. She is intrigued by any way to produce an interesting textured knitted or crocheted fabric.

Faina’s first foray into publishing began somewhat unusually in that her first publication was a book. Most people begin publishing with yarn companies and magazines before they write a book. Her first non-self publication was a book Casual Elegant Knits in 2008. After that she started to submit to magazines and work with yarn companies. Since then she has over 100 published designs and three books about knitting techniques. 

Her designs often appear in internationally recognized magazines such as Vogue Knitting, Interweave Knits, Knit.Purl, Knitscene, Interweave Crochet, Crochetscene, Twist Collective, and in various books by Soho publishing and F+W/ Interweave. Faina is best known for her elegant and well-fitted classic designs showing off textures, cables, brioche, and slip-stitch techniques.

Faina taught college mathematics for more than 30 years and loves interacting with her students. Faina enjoys teaching at conferences, various other venues and at local yarn shops around the country and abroad.Faina_book

Taking an early retirement from being a math professor gave her a chance to let her creativity and long-time passion for knitwear design become her second profession.

Faina enjoys going to the theater and museums, cooking gourmet food, watching movies, hiking, traveling, reading, learning photography and foreign languages, and just hanging out with her wonderful family.

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