on 2024, wool and buggers, and the time ahead

here we are again! doing yearly recaps for my little business has become somewhat of a habit. summing everything up and looking back before looking ahead seems to be what provides me with the most closure and peace of mind –?two things I need before charging ahead into the new year.

now you're all like –?ok, but it's like... February. what's up? well. this year, the recap has taken extra long because this year, change is more radical than before.

??????????? this year,?I’ve chosen to let go of my employment (at least for a little while) and focus 100% on my own business! ???????????

yeeppppp, that’s right. I’m taking a leave of absence from my full-time employment to focus fully on Anneli Xie and all of her little side projects (meaning I'll also do some freelance gigs and consulting) for the six months ahead. but mainly, the change was triggered because it obviously includes Wool and Buggers. mine and Aleksander Jaworowski 's pandemic baby that has since set off to become a small but global brand with over 85 000 followers across three channels. it’s been a wild ride and something I never in my wildest dreams could have imagined. I’m so proud of where we’re at with Wool and Buggers that it really does feel so right to give it more of my headspace in the months to come.

I’ll tell you more about future plans soon, but let’s look back on 2024 first.

2024 was about big moments and big changes –?a defining year in so many different ways, and one that was all about personal growth.?

??? in my professional life,

I shifted my focus from sustainable mobility to working fully with communications and applied AI and got to enjoy, explore, and understand the swedish AI ecosystem on a much deeper level. this shift truly got me out of my comfort zone, lecturing on AI in front of colleagues, partners –?and throughout the fall, 500 entrepreneurs in Sk?ne. it's been such a fun environment to be part of – and one I'll continue to be in as I'll still be doing some work for AI Sweden (only this time it'll be as a consultant). so don't fret, I'll still be part of the AI ecosystem –?you won't get rid of me that easily. <3

best of all, this year I got to be part of many incredible teams –?but I cherish my main one in particular. co-workers that I truly love working with, who have inspired me daily, who are all incredible karaoke singers, and who can certainly dress for the occasion. wow! Tommy Boije Kalle Magnusson Carl Malm

don’t worry though, I’m still a sustainable mobility geek –?bicycle urbanism in particular – and still engage with local advocacy groups. this year was slightly less active than 2023, but we did manage to start a tiny riot when Gabriel Malmer and I wrote an op-ed about how we need to be more multimodal, starting with being able to bring bicycles on trains. a fun fact is also that my bike got stolen in 2024 and I managed to get it back a couple of weeks ago, partly due to a photo of me and my bike, featured in this interview from 2023. ??

?? my personal life

also saw a lot of changes?and a lot of celebrations –?marrying the love of my life (and DIYing our whole wedding lol) being the biggest one by far.

other than that, I'd like to say that my personal life was focused on keeping a growth mindset and adopting a beginner's one.

• ?? aleks and I moved apartments and settled into Malm? – a city where we'd spent a lot of time previously but that we now get to explore and be part of in a completely different way.
• ???? my climbing (which is, I'd say, my main hobby) saw progress for what feels like the first time in years, managing my first 7A+ (V7). aleks and I also ended the year rope climbing after a four year hiatus, a new (old) form of climbing that we are bringing with us into 2025 (suddenly lead falls don't feel as scary anymore!)
• ?? at the end of the year, I also signed up for figure skating for the spring term of 2025, which has been an immensely gratifying new hobby to take on. being a complete beginner at something is SO SO SO fun and I want more people to be beginners always and forever.

?? on a side hustle note,

Wool and Buggers –?my crochet business –?saw a lot of growth throughout the year, reaching over 75 000 followers on Instagram by December.?

I produced 28 reels throughout the year and four of them went into the millions, gathering 2.7M, 2.4M, 2.9M, and 2.6M organic views respectively. the one featured in the video below got 2.6M views and was shared 12.6k times, which is an insane number to me as number of shares is not a metric that’s typically strong with my content.

gathering the numbers, that’s like if the entire swedish population (~10M) would view one of my four pieces of content and then the entire city of Dalby (aleks’ home town) would talk about one of them with each other. hahaha. putting it into perspective like that feels so absurd it’s annoying. but it's cool, right? even if I'm just outright bragging right now.

despite this –?which retroactively feels like a success – working with Wool and Buggers was also way harder than it’d been in previous years. I released way fewer patterns and felt, overall, more resistant to even log onto my social media accounts –?feeling a lot of pressure to produce “good enough” content and “unique enough” designs for my audience.?the funny thing about the design that did go the most viral (the quack vest), with two reels ranking up almost 6M in total, though, is that I was soooo insecure about the design that I almost didn't post it. something something imposter syndrome. seriously lol.

last year, I wrote about the fact that a lot of people think of content creation/“influencing” as an “easy job” and about trying to break free from the toxic lingo that surrounds content creators.

i still stand by that working with social media is incredibly taxing, although I have become better as viewing it as work. let me explain what I mean, though.

• first of all, your entire life is potential content (which is overwhelming), and
• secondly, your entire life has the potential of being measured in very exact numbers and KPIs (which is even more overwhelming).

it’s like you record snippets of your life and people will swipe away after four seconds because what your saying is just not interesting enough, or you’re not hot enough, or what you’re making isn’t unique enough.

imagine introducing yourself to someone IRL and they turn away mid-sentence because your introduction wasn’t delivered in an interesting enough way. yeehaw moment for sure ??

it’s made me hyper conscious about delivery, both IRL and online, in both good and bad ways –?especially as a person that has historically been very introverted, and as a kid, very very shy.

most of all, I think working with social media requires an unpretentious and unprestigious approach to life/work/hobbies –?which sometimes comes into contradiction with the immense access to metrics that measure… your life. LOL. some psycho will see this and say “well, that’s great! exact numbers will ensure progress and efficiency” but I think my mental health would argue differently.

throughout the year, I’ve learned to be less obsessed with metrics, but when you’re constantly benchmarking against yourself, that process is harder than it sounds and made what used to be the most fun thing ever, less fun.

in the springtime, Aleks learned how to crochet (all by himself) and that made crocheting feel a little bit more exciting again.

anyway. throughout the two years I’ve been actively working with Wool and Buggers, I’ve from time to time fantasized about doing it full-time –?and then found excuses to not do it. I won’t go too deeply into detail because it feels annoying, but there’s been a lot of doubt in all aspects of what working with W&B full-time would entail. everything from “I’m not good or unique or pretty enough” to more rational thoughts like “income fluctuates too much from month to month to truly do this full-time”. still, the thought has never left me, and during the end of 2023 I told myself that if I could maintain an income that I could live off on, even on months when I was not actively posting, I’d give it a go –?and at the end of 2024, that’s where I was with Wool and Buggers.

income fluctuated from month-to-month, surely, but that also meant that some months I earned more selling crochet patterns than I did being employed full-time. it still feels tacky to speak of money, but at the same time I also want to stand on a rooftop and scream and let everyone know that there is money in hobbies and the things that we love and the things we never thought could be monetized –?like crocheting.?with a big disclaimer that this is not to say that we need to capitalize and monetize on everything (and not to say that we need to always share our hobbies and creativity with the world –?that's a whole different story), but just to say that another world is possible.

it's like my favorite youtuber Mina Le put it: "We are deep in the depths of girl internet. Girls are girling, hot girls are walking, girls are blogging, dinner is girl, 40-year-old men are baby girls, we are in a girl economy." hear it down below, at 1:05. also, obviously, became a trending audio –?because GIRL INTERNET. oh, how I love girl internet. (and let's not get into the other side of internet, i.e. the extreme right radicalizing young boys, because I will scream).

I’ve also realized that a lot of people don’t understand what exactly it is that I do or how I earn money through Wool and Buggers. I don’t earn money on content as of now, because Instagram, which is by far my biggest platform, doesn’t allow content monetization –?unlike platforms like YouTube and TikTok, which I have, but haven’t fully had the time to explore. I also don’t usually do sponsorships, as most of them have been unpaid and because big companies like to exploit (usually) young women that don’t have a lot of business experience and offer yarn (which realistically is less than $100) for a lot of content pieces (and sometimes owning the rights to your face, voice, and brand for a prolonged period of time) –?a trap I almost fell into at the beginning of my crocheting journey.

a lot of people also seem to think that I sell physical items, which is not the case. crochet goods are luxury goods because they are inherently handmade. crochet CANNOT be replicated by machine. there are knitting machines, but no crochet machines, meaning everything you see in store that is crocheted is crocheted 100% by HAND and with no sort of machine aid. selling physical items would give me arthritis and no one in my target demographic (young adults) would be able to afford it if I would also give myself a reasonable hourly pay.

instead, I make money selling crochet patterns, which is sort of like a guide (or a recipe) for making a sweater or sweater vest or scarf or whatever it may be. pattern writing and pattern testing takes time, but once a pattern is finished, it’s a digital product that can theoretically live forever. to manage to sell these patterns, marketing is obviously required –?and lots of it. I’d like to say I only do user-generated content (UGC) although it gets into a gray zone since I market using myself (as a person) but for my own brand, right, but whatever. anyway, UGC is where social media comes into play (as a platform for spreading my content). so social media is a gateway for brand awareness but the actual conversion happens some other place (my website or Etsy, as of now), much like any other store online. long way of saying I don’t make money producing content, but why content is quintessential to what I do.

a lot of people also seem to worry that the market is saturated, to which I always say that it is but in the best way possible. let me explain.

there is what feels like an endless supply of crochet patterns, but because I operate on a global market, there is also, theoretically at least, endless demand.

this fact i think is also why the crochet community can still be so close-knit, and why I view my “competitors” more as friends to seek inspiration from than as competitors I’ll vigorously compare myself with. we are not mutually exclusive from each other and we can celebrate each other’s successes because there is enough people in the market for all of us to succeed (without getting greedy and thinking of monopolizing on a market that is so inherently tied to personal taste, personality, and creativity lol). yay!!!

OKAY, ENOUGH. WHAT'S NEXT? ??

as I mentioned in the beginning of this (now) very long post –?I'm taking some time off, six months to be exact, from my full-time employment to fully focus on my own business and my own projects.

what's ahead still isn't fully fledged out. part of this time off is meant to allow time and headspace to actually think about what I want Wool and Buggers to be and how I can work to achieve that:

• is it something I want to bring IRL, and how would that look and feel like?
• is it something I do want to do full-time, or is it something I want to continue as a side gig?
• is it something that should focus more on content or more on product development?
• is it something that should extend from crocheting?
• is it something that I can branch off into something else?

and so on and so forth. just to give you a general idea of the sorts of things I'm hoping to sort out. but most of all, I'd like to try being fully self-employed for a while, working on what has always been a passion project but that I think has the potential to become something else (and if I want to bring it there is another question).

...ah, and I also, obviously, have an endless backlog of things that I want to do and that are easier to get started on, like updating my website, updating my patterns, being more structured with my content and content making, and so on.

let's touch base again in six months, or maybe even before that. ??

lots of love!

xoxo Anneli