Though Ella Emhoff turned heads with her modeling debut, walking the runway isn’t the only thing former Vice President Kamala Harris’ stepdaughter does for a living. She’s also a practitioner of DIY crafts who teaches her very own workshops. However, Emhoff was recently forced to put that on hold after a scary accident left her a bit banged up.

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On her Instagram Stories, Emhoff announced that her next planned craft workshop would have to be postponed after she sustained an injury in a biking accident. She accompanied this message with a mirror selfie that shows her arm in a makeshift sling. Fortunately, this particular injury doesn’t seem too serious. “Overall, I’m OK. This is what I get for biking in the rain,” Emhoff wrote in a follow-up post. Hopefully, she’ll be able to make a full recovery before too long.

@ellaemhoff/Instagram

@ellaemhoff/Instagram

One of the tragic details about Emhoff is that she has suffered from chronic back pain for most of her life, so, an arm injury on top of that doesn’t exactly sound fun. But while her injury has temporarily put her career as an arts and crafts instructor on hold, Emhoff is certainly staying active on social media. In a more recent post to Instagram Stories, she made it clear that she was still involved in the political world by campaigning for New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Kwame Mamdani.

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Back in August 2024, Ella Emhoff opened up about the chronic pain she’s dealt with for her whole life. In yet another post to Instagram Stories, Kamala Harris’ stepdaughter explained that she was born with a tethered spine, which means her spinal cord was attached to the surrounding tissue. Because of this, Emhoff says, her spine didn’t lengthen properly while she was growing, resulting in a hunchback and, even worse, near-constant discomfort. “Was in and out of doctors and [physical therapy] for most of my adolescence,” Emhoff recalled (via Newsweek), adding, “Got lower back surgery grew a million inches and now deal with chronic pain.”

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Emhoff certainly didn’t let the pain stop her from continuing to pursue her love of crafts, particularly knitting, into adulthood. Speaking to Cultured in 2023, she recalled, “I’ve always really loved working with other people. During school, my friends and I would always work together in the studios, and it made working fun and also weirdly easy to concentrate.” Emhoff also expressed her desire to grow this passion beyond her inner circle. “I still make an effort to have studio days with my friends … I would like to expand it so more people can come and more yarn is donated and more people are knitting,” she said. As we now know, she’s done just that through her ticketed workshops. With any luck, her arm will be better soon, and she can get back to creating.

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