Hi! My name is Kika.
Or actually my name is Veronika, but everyone calls me Kika.
I launched my Instagram account @Kutovakika (meaning ‘knitting Kika’ in Finnish) in 2017 while I was living in Stockholm, and two years later I started my YouTube channel while living in London.
Today I share tips and my passion for knitting on social media with my audience of nearly 500,000 active followers.
In 2020 I moved back to my hometown Helsinki where now live with my husband and two cats Luna and Viggo.
In 2022 I got married and knitted my own wedding dress in just 6 weeks, see the full story here.
Here’s the story behind Kutovakika.
I could knit before I could walk
Or, at least it feels like that.
When I try to think back, I can’t remember a time in my life where I didn’t know how to knit.
Like a lot of knitters, I also learned to knit from my Grandmother, I think I was around 5 or 6 years old. She helped me complete my first knitted piece which was a pink pony. It probably had more holes than intact stitches, but I was still very proud of it.
Being a knitter
Being a knitter means you get to express yourself and make things you, or people in your life get to wear, which I find very satisfying and a lot of fun! Also, being able to say “Oh, this? I actually made this myself” is a very cool feeling.
It’s fascinating to witness the process where yarn gets transformed into fabric in your own hands, and how the choices in fibers, needle size, stitch pattern and construction all affect the outcome.
It’s a highly addictive craft, but for a long time I didn’t think I could ever make a sustainable living with knitting.
And to be honest, the road here hasn’t exactly been easy or straightforward…
How it all started
When I was 4 I wanted to become a princess. When I was 7 I realised this would be tricky to pursue as a career and decided I wanted to become a gardener. Then my cactus died and I needed to take a hard look at my future plans.
At the age of 13 one of my favourite things to do was to drag my portable cd player to the living room and dance to the beats of The Supremes, so I decided I wanted to become a dancer.
After years of hard work and thousands of late night dance classes, recitals and performances, I finally graduated with a MA in Choreography from The University of Arts in Helsinki. There was only one problem…
I didn’t want to be a dancer anymore.
It was so hard to accept and realise that the goal I had worked so hard to achieve my whole life wasn’t what I wanted to pursue as a career anymore as an adult.
I felt like I was pulling the carpet from under my own moonwalk.
Which, by the way is a pretty cool move so I guess the 16 years spent dancing 8 hours a day wasn’t a complete waste after all ;)
Feeling lost and confused
In 2016 right after graduation I moved from Helsinki to Stockholm to move in with my ex-partner.
It felt like a good moment to take a breather after so many years of intense studies, and take some time to figure out what I wanted to do next with my life.
Knitting was all I did for a while, between some part time jobs and you know, the weekly existential crisis, but then I showed my ex-partner my old knitting blog and he suggested I should try to sell my handmade knits, and that’s what I did.
Obviously, nothing is as simple as that, and I quickly realized that just having a webshop doesn’t mean anyone will buy anything.
Building a knit-empire
I listened to business advice I picked up on TV from the show Shark Tank, and took notes on how to build an audience on Instagram from the podcast Hashtag Authentic. It became clear I needed better photos if I was going to make this knitting empire-thing work.
I renamed my Instagram account Kutovakika (meaning “knitting Kika” in Finnish) in 2017.
Well, one thing led to another, and soon photography and Instagram was all that occupied my mind day and night.
Becoming an Instagrammer
Equipped with the self timer function on my iPhone 4 I soon found myself out in the muddy fields of Djurgården posing with various whimiscal props I dragged out in the rain.
I would go to ridiculous lengths and spend hours editing my photos using Photoshop to try to create these magical and fantasy-like photos that I then shared on Instagram.
Slowly my audience grew, and even though I wasn’t physically on a stage dancing anymore, I found a way to perform in my creative self portraits.
Also, I wasn’t alone anymore, I had found a community online. Making these photos was fun and challenging, actually very challenging at times, but it gave me a sense of direction when I really needed it.
And, because I’m an all in or all out person, I decided I wanted to try to become a full time content creator.
A risky dream
In 2018 I moved to London when my ex-partner got offered a job there, and since I had around 50,000 followers on Instagram at that time, the doors to a lot more content creator job opportunities opened up.
In the beginning of 2019 I launched my Youtube channel and I was able to quit my part time job as a retail store sales assistant, all in the same month.
Looking back, it all sounds like it went pretty fast, but for a long time day to day life consisted of investing a lot of work and time into something that felt like a really distant and risky dream.
Moving back home
Then the pandemic hit and in spring 2020 I moved back home to Helsinki. I had felt homesick for quite a long time already, and when the world changed overnight, I felt I just wanted to be back home.
After about a year of being back home something shifted in me, and even though I was making a living as a content creator, the joy and energy I once had felt towards creative photography wasn’t there anymore.
Changing direction, again
I did one of the scariest things I’ve ever done, and announced that I’m quitting my photography videos on YouTube. It was really scary because being a YouTuber is how I made a large part of my living and photography had been the building block of my career that far.
But I had a strong intuitive desire to focus my work on something that would make me feel more grounded, and suddenly all I could think about was knitting again.
Knitting all the time
The decision wasn’t easy though, and I went back and forth questioning everything for months.
What if my audience of 170,000 subscribers will leave if I change the direction of my channel? Am I making a huge mistake?
It brought back memories from those early years in Stockholm, and I was faced with the daunting but also exciting pursuit of changing direction once again.
It’s been a rocky road
Ever since I left the comforts of being a student to go and pursue my own thing, I’ve gone through moments of feeling insane self doubt, broken down from the pressure to keep producing and sharing content all the time, struggled to believe in my work when growth stagnated and I still sometimes wonder how on Earth I went from being an art major to making a career on social media?
But, it’s also been the most satisfying journey I’ve ever experienced in building up something from zero with no one telling me how to do it, all fueled by my own discoveries and curiosity.
Today and the future
Today I’m a full time Youtuber and knit designer, and a self-taught entrepreneur.
I can say that with confidene and pride now, but in the beginning I felt really embarrassed to talk about my dreams. It’s taken me a long time to finally start to believing that I‘ll figure things out, no matter what my creative squirrel brain comes up with next.
The ride has not been boring so far, and I can’t wait for what’s coming up next. I’m so happy that you’re here with me to share it :)
-Kika
