Craft + Tech = Code ❤
Crafts has been a hobby of mine since I was a kid, but the types of crafts have changed over the years. As a kid, drawing and painting was my everything, then came the teenage years and my first computer, and I discovered HTML. Built a couple of webpages and had a blast. In my twenties I was totally in to knitting, crocheting, embroidery, you name it. Even worked in a yarn-store for 5 years!
Alongside all this crafting, I’ve also been a tech-lover. My most recent hobby-project has been to convert all the lighting in our house to smart, voice-controlled lighting.
I grew up in the garage with my dad, who was a engineer in one of Swedens nuclear-plants, and a huge techie. He always encouraged me to try everything, as he was a fond believer that girls could do any thing they wanted. He bought me childrens books about technology, and explained everything to me. He built his own solar-panels to heat the water in our house, of course with me by his side. Bless his soul, all that patience with mini-me beside him, asking about everything. ❤
The only big mistake I think he ever did was when I was 14 years old, and I said I wanted to work with coding websites. And he responded to me that I could never make money from that, because it was not a “real” job. So I stopped doing it, stopped dreaming about it, chose other paths in life. Paths that have been fun, but not really my thing. My latest job, running my own business as a nail-artist, has been an evolving an interesting journey. Allt that creativity and crafting (yes, doing nails is a real handcraft) channeled into this little business I’ve been so very proud of.
…but what about the tech-part? Bear with me, I’ll get there.
For the last two years I’ve been somewhat bored. I felt I did not progress in the way I had planned. Though I had a steady income, a flourishing business, a great place to work and other amazingly creative people I shared workplace with, it felt like something was missing.
Then I got sick, most probably Covid-19, but since they did not test people in our region back then (march/april 2020) I can’t be sure. I had to stay at home for six weeks, and fortunately in that same time, my new computer arrived. Bought it mainly for the purpose of playing World of Warcraft, but one afternoon I stumbled upon a link to Tjejer kodar, a swedish initiative to get more women in to the tech-industry. They had an online intro-class to HTML and CSS, where you get a new thing to do day every day for 4 days, and I thought “What the heck, I’m home sick and my brain needs some exercise”. So I did the classes, and it went fast, it was so fun I couldn’t stop, I even e-mailed the founders and begged them to send the rest of the material right away so I could continue.
The rest is history, as folks tend to say.
Here I am now, 35 years old, attending the Technigo frontend-developer bootcamp. Starting a new journey in life, combining my passion for both crafts and tech. Because that’s really what coding is to me, crafting + tech. And I love it!