Vancouver knitwear designer Erin Guimond transforms ADHD into maximalist fibre art under @pickyfemme

Erin Guimond always needed to keep her hands busy. Her mother recognized this early and taught her to knit young. The practice stuck, shaped by ADHD into something neither Guimond nor her mother could have predicted: a creative voice that would eventually reach tens of thousands of people and land her publishing deals.

Today, the Vancouver-based queer fibre artist and knitwear designer, known online as @pickyfemme, has amassed more than 30,000 Instagram followers and a growing catalogue of published knitting patterns. But before the colourful sweaters, the publishing deal with Pom Pom Publishing, and the online audience, knitting was simply something she did for herself. "It felt very personal to me," she said. "It felt like something that I was doing for myself, and I never pictured myself sharing it with anyone."

The pandemic changed that. When Guimond began sharing her work online, she discovered something she hadn't anticipated: demand. "I didn't realize there was such a big demand out there for fun, colourful, unique pieces," she said. "I think what I'm doing is pretty different from what a lot of big knitting influencers or big knitters on Instagram are doing." Within about a year, her follower count grew from roughly 300 to more than 30,000.

The difference, she says, comes down to one thing: colour. "It's a real beige world out there. A very beige world." Her own designs lean in the opposite direction. Saturated colour palettes, playful motifs, and layered textures have become signatures. "Putting my really colourful stuff out there kind of shook things up a little bit," she said. "People started taking notice."

Followers weren't just admiring the work—they wanted to make it themselves. "I was getting such a reaction from folks," Guimond recalls. "People were recreating my sweaters from photos and tagging me. There was a real opening for it." That demand inspired her to move into pattern design, a shift she describes as more rewarding than selling finished garments. "In the knitting world, it's all about patterns," she explained. "The goal is to make a design accessible for other people to make themselves and customize themselves, which I love."

The work is considerably more technical than many people expect. When Guimond was knitting solely for herself, most of the work happened instinctively. "I would think of it in my mind, draw it out, and make it without taking notes or doing any math," she said. Now, working with Pom Pom Publishing, every design involves sketches, charts, sizing, and grading—the infrastructure of a pattern that teaches someone else to build what she envisioned. "It's walking the line between accessibility for folks to be able to make it themselves, but also to be aspirational," she said. "You want people to make something they never thought they could."