We meet in the café, where she comes to pick me up. She is ahead of time, so she continues to knit the piece which she had with her at the car service this morning, while waiting for me to finish up my second breakfast.

We drive to their home.

A small red toy car is parked just in the middle of the hallway when we enter. All the lights are on, and together with the toy, they suggest the corridor has only recently been exited.

From the hallway, I am given a very speedy tour around the one-floor family home, and I quickly follow her through the open-plan living room to the kitchen area. There’s soft lighting, light colours, and warm floors in this room. We land to sit behind the kitchen island

Anna sorts knitting pattern papers, commenting that she has certain music she listens to in the background. ‘Okay … it is four, and we need to be done by the 11th of December,’ she sighs, and what she lists remains known only to herself. ‘But I have the feeling that it is going to be fine.’ She takes the calculator, calculates, checks the numbers, writes these down onto the pattern, scratches her forehead, taps her fingers on the table, and sighs again — all in almost one deep breath. The same actions are repeated a few times in different order. ‘Trettio..., trettio..., åtta...,’ she counts, now faster: ‘Trettio-trettio-åtta... Hä-häh!’ She laughs, claps her hands and briefly stomps her feet on the kitchen floor. The floor covering looks like warm-toned wood and it has small scratches from living and bread and muesli crumbs. Her body language shifts as she energetically marks numbers on the sweater pattern. Singing along with the next song, she occasionally whistles and adds: ‘Okay, well, it might work.’ Only now I learn that one of the new projects at the advanced technical knitting course she takes is a small raglan-style half-sweater.

After a while we've moved on to the next job. On every full workday when she's able to focus on crafts, she tries to translate at least one knitting pattern from Danish to Swedish. ‘It’s hard to translate without knitting it, although you kind of knit it in your head. I want to cast on every project.’ Her fingers tap on the keyboard and her eyes move quickly between its lines as she works on a Danish pattern.

Since we arrived, everything has happened at a tremendous speed. All Anna’s movements are very fast: she is finishing her tasks one by one and ticking them off from this week’s to-do list. Being in her company, I only manage to observe what is happening right in front of my nose. She comments that because she loves her work, she usually doesn’t take breaks during the day. But when she’s at home, she tries to get the laundry done so that there's a reason to pause when hanging it.

‘Hej, Google, pausa,’ Anna says into the air, and the music stops on its own.

I ask her how long she thinks we’ve been home. ‘When we arrived, the washing machine still had 1 hour and 45 minutes more. And now there are 45 minutes left. So yes, 1 hour has passed.’

‘I usually switch between this spot and the kitchen,’ she said at the very beginning, referring to the sofa corner in the living area. As I go to observe it, more of the surroundings start to reveal themselves in front of my eyes. On the wider couch is a patchwork quilt and one pillow bearing the imprint of a small body; at the other end of the sofa there are the elbow dimples left in a pillow. One of the large backrest cushions is placed on the floor. On the top and between the cushions is a pillow-sized knitting project of thicker light-brown yarn in a cool tone, knit in stockinette — a knitting pattern with v-shaped stitches in front and bumpy back rows — though it's hard to tell what it is. On the circular thick needles, there are 12 stitches left, 6 on each side. A small tape measure is unrolled and its end disappears between the pillows. The table in front holds three textured knitted balls in light grey and dark red yarn — one the size of an orange and two the size of tangerines — all with hanging loops attached, a knitting supplies bag, a bow knitted from fluffy red yarn, and small traces of the last meal, among other objects.

While I sit on the sofa in the company of the cat, who is 18 years old and is already embracing me closely, I notice that here and there on the floor are toys — small cars, balls, stuffed animals — ready for play.

Now it's been a few hours since we arrived. In the bedroom, Anna selects yarns for her next knitting school assignment from floor-to-ceiling shelves in her walk-in closet. (The project is to knit a multi-coloured sample, the design of which is initially divided into squares, then into triangles, and whose colour scheme must be able to express the emotion of an imagined place). With the selection spread on the bed, she occasionally moves the yarn balls to and from the pile, finding smaller, already used materials from various surfaces in the room. ‘These should go together … Maybe I should save those for the sweater,’ and she sets the pink ones aside. The colour tones have a vibe of a ‘new hip store in the town’, as she puts it.

‘Ett, två, tre, fyra …,’ she spreads the yarns on the table and sketches a freehand square on a bright blue A4 sheet, dividing it into a 4x4 grid of smaller squares. ‘Should we make all of those as triangles, like this?’ She turns to me, and I laugh, as with this moment I’ve been pulled into the design process of her knitting school homework.

‘Five ..., four ..., three ..., two ..., two ..., one ... it works. And if we’re talking about the whole square, it’s twenty-eight: tretton, elva, sex, fyra, tre, två, två, en, … yes!’ She sits with her body half-supported on the chair, with her home clothes on and a narrow knitted light scarf loosely knotted around her neck.

Two hours later, Anna’s eight-year-old arrives home through the rain, briefly joining us at Anna’s knitting and my sketching activities. We chat a little, then the child leaves to get some yoghurt, muesli, and four raspberries, while quietly commenting (in English) to no one in particular: ‘I love my life.’

While we picked up the youngest from preschool, the 13-year-old has arrived home. Anna briefly looks at her current ongoing school project — 7 of 28 rows completed — but sets it aside as ‘too advanced’ for now.

In the living room Anna, the children and I have placed ourselves around the space. Anna sits on a large couch cushion placed on the floor and continues with a simpler knitting project. The youngest occasionally climbs on her while having non-verbal conversations. The middle child sits nearby, reading their homework aloud. The oldest enters the room, turns to the mother and, acknowledging the situation, goes back to other activities. Knitting continues. Anna’s hands move quickly, with her right ear focused on the middle child, as her eyes occasionally follow the other two's cookie-eating activities from the reflection in the kitchen window.

We discuss the value of hand-knitting, comparing the cost of time, especially, and materials to store-bought alternatives. She reflects on how dressing her youngest in woollen items is worthwhile, but covering herself is a luxury. I jokingly ask if she has figured out at what age her children will outgrow the time-material-profitability of hand-knitted items. We talk about resale values, where her homemade sweaters often exceed the cost of their materials.

As our time together winds down, I come to realise how the real “price(lessness)” of handmade work is best appreciated by the right audience. At the same time, a small sweater — along with its wearer — runs back into the room and toward their mother.