a visit from
Ella Emhoff
Ella wears Picnic Dress in size Small and Pocket Pants in size Small.
Salter House: Where are you from, originally? Tell us about the house you grew up in.
Ella: I grew up in Los Angeles, though “grew up” is generous. I moved around a lot, so there’s no single house that holds all the nostalgia. The first one I actually remember was a ranch-style home in the Palisades: concrete floors, everything white, very modern and minimal. Not exactly a wonderland for a kid. The saving grace was a big backyard with a pool that was basically a permanent party.
Ella wears Torchon Lace Dress in size Medium.
How would you describe your home? Is there a specific style or design tradition you’re drawn to?
Honestly, ask me in six months. I’m in the middle of a full redecoration, so right now it’s more “organized chaos” than any intentional aesthetic. I think that’s actually how I like to work, living inside something for a while before I know what it wants to be. My apartment is basically one big open room with no doors, so whatever direction it goes, it has to feel cohesive. We’re getting there.
What’s your favorite room at home?
I live in a New York apartment, so the concept of “rooms” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. It’s really one space broken into zones with no doors between them. I’d love to say I have a dreamy studio corner or a cozy reading nook, but mostly every area just becomes a new surface for clutter to colonize. They all annoy me equally.
Ella wears the Sisters Nightdress
Tell us about your knitting practice. How did you come to it?
I learned to knit when I was six and it was one of those things I kept picking back up throughout my life without ever fully committing to it. Then I went to Parsons and started taking actual knitting classes, and something clicked in a totally new way. It stopped being a hobby and started feeling like a real language for me. That’s when it bloomed into everything else: the textile work, the knit paintings, eventually Soft Hands Craft Club.
What do you like making the most?
Everything scratches a different creative itch, so it’s genuinely hard to pick. But if I’m being honest, my knit paintings are the ones that feel most like mine. There’s something about the repetition of duplicate stitch that becomes almost meditative. You’re making thousands of tiny decisions that add up to something larger. It’s the closest I get to a moving meditation, and I need that.
Ella wears the Chemise Dress in Medium and the Drawstring Pants in Medium.
In the long, long history of knitting, are there any specific styles or traditions you feel like you connect with? Any vernacular styles?
I’m most drawn to duplicate stitch. It’s this technique where you essentially embroider over an existing knit base, which lets you get incredibly detailed and painterly with it. It’s where my textile work and my visual art instincts meet. The precision of it is what I love. You can make something that reads as an image from a distance and as pure texture up close.
Ella wears the Pinafore Dress.
Classes and gatherings are a key part of your knitting practice. How do education and community support craft? Do you think we should revisit any of those craft infrastructures of the past?
I run workshops through Soft Hands Craft Club that teach the techniques I use, but the bigger goal has always been promoting craft as a genuine tool for mental health and stress relief. There’s something about making things with your hands that quiets the noise in a way nothing else does. And I don’t think we need to revisit those older craft infrastructures so much as recognize that we’re already in their renaissance. You can’t scroll for five minutes without someone launching a new workshop series or stitch circle. The guild is back, it just lives on Instagram now.
Have you repaired or restored anything recently?
Yes, and it’s maybe my most personal project right now. I have this Herman Miller chair that I’ve genuinely hated for years, partly because of where it came from and who it came from. Instead of getting rid of it, I decided to transform it into something I actually want to look at. I’m hand stitching a massive open mouth across the whole thing so it looks like you’re sitting inside of a mouth when you use it. It’s part restoration, part exorcism.
Ella wears the Ivory Silk Wrap Dress.
What one house museum would you recommend visiting?
I’ll be transparent: I don’t think I’ve ever actually been to a house museum, which means I’m genuinely open to recommendations. Consider this my public ask.
We have so many! Soane House, Kettles Yard, the Gardner... What else have you been working on recently? Any work we should look out for?
A lot of stitching projects have been quietly accumulating, the chair, some new knit paintings, various experiments, and my goal is to pull enough together for a proper art show. Beyond that, I’ve been putting real energy into expanding Soft Hands Knitting Club: building out the workshop curriculum, bringing the series to new venues, and growing it into something with a real community infrastructure behind it. Longer term, the dream is a permanent physical space, part craft studio, part community hub. Still building toward that one.
