Whenever I was allowed to sleep in on the Saturday mornings of my youth, I'd listen for the peddler with the sharpening stone.

"Knives and scissors," he'd sing-song his way through the alley behind our Logan rowhouse. "Bring out your knives and scissors."

Unfortunately, my mother was deaf to his calls. She welcomed the Fuller Brush man. In her mind, cheap knives were good enough. And to my knowledge, she never had hers sharpened.

Thus, I came to cooking inadequately armed, an easy mark for specialty gadgets I hoped would make up for my kitchen ignorance.

In Mastering Knife Skills ($35, Stewart, Tabori & Chang, May 2008), Norman Weinstein of New York's Institute of Culinary Education traces knife lore from the Stone Age (fascinating) and wisely quotes the irascible Anthony Bourdain:

"I wish I could go through the kitchens of amateur cooks everywhere just throwing knives out from their drawers," Bourdain wrote in his 2000 memoir, Kitchen Confidential. "All those medium-size utility knives, those useless serrated things . . . those ineptly designed slicers - not one of the damn things could cut a tomato."

Weinstein's book also comes with a nifty DVD, but there's nothing like hands-on learning. So I signed on for a two-hour, $39 Knife Skills class at Foster's Homeware. Similar classes are offered at the Marketplace at East Falls, Sur La Table, Williams-Sonoma, La Cucina in the Reading Terminal Market, and a long list of area cooking schools such as Charlotte Albertson's. You want a hands-on class, not a demonstration.

At Foster's, I don an apron along with seven like-minded amateurs. We assemble at an island where places are set with a cutting board, a forged stainless steel chef's knife, and a hand towel for each of us.

Among my classmates is Jeri Behrman, 33, an attorney who admits to cooking precious little at home.

"If I make brownies, that's a big deal," she says. Still, she says, everybody needs to know proper knife skills and this is her moment.

Another lawyer, Leanne Litwin, 49, from Society Hill, confesses her love of cooking.

"I've always had it in my head that in my next career I'd be a pastry chef," she says, adding that she hopes that opportunity arises sooner rather than later.

Instructor Betty Kaplan notes that professional training centers such as the Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College might devote weeks or months to knife skills. Still, we can and will learn much in these two hours.

She starts with equipment and its care.

Compared with hair care (the highlights and styling gels; all those touchups; the frequent, pricey cuts), proper knife care is simple and pretty much indisputable:

First, buy the best 8-to-10-inch forged (not stamped) stainless steel chef's knife you can afford. Expect to spend $80 to $120. Shop in a store, not online, so you can feel the knife's heft. Do not buy knives in a set.

Buy a steel because you must hone your knife every time you use it (see the glossary below). Take your knife to a professional for sharpening once or twice a year.

Cut on a clean, stable cutting board. A large wooden board is best; rinse it after every use and keep it supple with mineral oil.

Rinse your knife after each use in warm water and dry it immediately. Store it flat in a proper sleeve, or in a freestanding wooden block that is not accessible to children.

"The knife becomes an extension of the cook," Kaplan says. "A cook and her knife become as one."