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Handmade Stories

Kajsa's repaired sweater. Courtesy of Kajsa Larsdotter.

“When you have a friend who has sheep, whom you’ve met and cuddled with and such, and then you knit a sweater out of yarn from these sheep, and then you can go back to them and hug them with their own wool. Then it is really locally produced.”



Swedish language
10 minutes
Simon's carved ladle from the garden pear tree, towels made by his grandmother, and a family photograph of his grandmother’s sister and her husband, standing in front of the pear tree (left in photo) in 1949. Courtesy of Simon Jonsson.

“To me, these are the best dish towels. But it’s really the whole feeling and just because it’s my grandmother who made them, and I think of her every time I use the towels. So that makes them the best dish towels in the whole world.”



Swedish language
15 minutes
Camilla’s knits and photographs of Camilla with her mother and aunt Olga in 1999 and 2000. Courtesy of Camilla Guzmán.

“It feels like it was tía Olga who invented knitting in our family, who began knitting, and now I sit here and can knit, thanks to her really.”



Swedish language
6 minutes
Cristina, to the right, wearing her first handmade garment, photographed by her mother Gerd Uhlén in 1981. Courtesy of Cristina Uhlén.

“The fact that I started sewing, painting, and crafting; maybe that’s also what made me dare to throw myself into things, to which I know that I’m probably a little handy after all. So maybe I can even manage to build a house, with what that implies, to lay floors and paint and all that — and I did!”



Swedish language
7 minutes
Sebastian's craft of natural clay, signed with his initials. Courtesy of Sebastian Orehovacki Månsson.

“For me, it’s very much about being able to do something just because I want to. No matter how strange others may think it is, to collect a lot of debris in nature and put it together. But I really feel that I can be myself for a bit. There’s just something in me that says ’this is what you should do’ and then I do it. And that feels like freedom, somehow.”



Swedish language
5 minutes
© Camilla Uhlén 2022