A textured, baby pink half-sweater in tricot knit resembling a zigzag pattern; a powder blue and beige muffler with lacelike interlocking loops; a feathery soft peach crop top in a diamond weave; a patterned light grey water bottle cover—Bengaluru-based engineer Sohail Nargund is famous on social media as ‘the boy who knits with love’. He started in 2019, when he was 29 years old and suffered from anxiety disorder due to an increasing workload.
On a particularly bad day, he came across an article on the therapeutic benefits of knitting. He went out and bought a ball of yarn. With the first slip knot on the needle, he began a new hobby. Today, his handmade sustainable knitwear on Instagram (the_rough_hand_knitter)—the feed is full of colourful images of beanies, scarves and sweaters—has 28,000-followers and counting.
“Knitting helped me escape anxiety and soon became a passion,” Nargund says, adding, “The repetitive warp and weft induce a sense of calm and the practice breaks the myth of perfection—even if you make a mistake, the loops of the interlacing yard will cover it up.” The decision to become a professional knitter was made off the cuff. A friend following his work on social media placed an order for a sweater, which Nargund declined initially, but after she insisted, quoted a modest amount of Rs 1,000. “I didn’t think anybody would pay more than that, but my friend gave me Rs 1,700, saying she saw the worth in it,” says the engineer, whose signature bougainvillaea cropped sweater with balloon sleeves, inspired by the resplendent blooms of the plant, is a hot-seller.
“Creativity cannot be time-lined. There are days when I am bursting with ideas and other times when there is no motivation at all. I never force things to happen,” says the self-taught knitter, who learnt the basics from YouTube videos and can today create complex stitches such as garter, stockinette, moss and seed, making his garments versatile.
Nargund admits to knitting everywhere and anywhere—trains, planes (he substitutes steel needles with wooden ones on flights), bus, cafés, parks, even during long virtual office meetings. Needless to say, he gets a lot of attention—much of it positive. “Some see knitting as an effeminate pursuit, so eye rolls and stares are common. The truth is, hobbies are not gender-biased; people are. That’s why I purposely knit more in public than at home to normalise it,” he says. While his short-term goal is to introduce bigger sizes in his knits, his long-term endeavour is to break stereotypes around knitting and get more men into the ‘loop’.