Skip to main content
Vincent Greene-Hite was floundering.
In 2015, the then-19-year-old decided college just wasn’t for him. He dropped out of Western Oregon University and moved back in with his parents in Portland, leaving him with a lot of time on his hands, and little idea of how to fill it.
“I did the next logical step,” he says, “and I looked up how to crochet on YouTube.”
Green-Hite isn’t entirely sure why he chose as his new hobby a craft mostly popular among the granny set. He just figured it would offer him some level of gratification at a time when he admits feeling “kind of pathetic.” He picked it up quickly, though—he was especially drawn to amigurumi, the Japanese art of crocheted stuffed animals, which he used to create yarn versions of his favorite Pokémon characters.
But then a friend got a new camera. What initially started as a way to pass the time then made its way to Instagram, and opened up a whole new world of opportunities for him.
“I was just making stuff, and we would just go out and put them in different scenarios—putting them in trees, in the city, somewhere fun,” Green-Hite says. “My Instagram was growing at a pace. Then, I don’t know why, but I took a selfie looking kind of silly with my stuff. And it just blew up from there.”
Today, Green-Hite, 24, is probably Instagram’s foremost crochet influencer, with over 50,000 followers. He travels the country speaking at conferences. He has sponsorships from several yarn companies, and an ambassadorship with craft giant Joann’s Fabrics. He also has his own website, knotbadami.com, where he offers instructions on how to create things like crochet suspenders, Christmas ornaments and Poké Balls.
Crocheting is now a full-time gig for Green-Hite, something he couldn’t imagine when he started looking up yarn tutorials in his parents’ basement four years ago.
“I was really lucky to be born in the age of the internet,” he says.
