The Year I Tried to Knit a Sweater a Week: ADHD, Burnout, and SO MANY Cozy Sweaters

One week before I considered switching careers to “woman who just sits quietly.”

In January 2024, I was fired up.

I had just designed my first knitting pattern and was feeling pret-ty confident in what my carpal-tunnel-ridden hands and a pair of 15mm circular needles could do. I was going to start a business (not my first rodeo), and this time it was going to be a clothing brand (definitely a first). I had the vision: I’d make a full collection that would obviously sell out instantly and secure my status as the cozy overlord of handmade fashion. 

(Spoiler: it did not sell out instantly. But more on that another time.)

In the glow of new-year energy and mild delusion, I set a goal:

Knit one sweater per week. For all 52 weeks.
No big deal. Just some light, year-long, self-imposed pressure.

I posted about it online and—boom—the first video hit 200K views. Some people were skeptical.

Which meant, of course, now I was definitely doing it.

The first 15 were a blur of wool and pride.
Eight cardigans. Six vests. One pullover.

I was riding high on the dopamine, the comments of support, the slight nerve damage.

Then came the trolls.

“With yarn that chunky, it’s nothing special.”
“Cardigans aren’t sweaters.”

(Sir, this is not a legally binding contract…)

And somewhere around week 17… things started to unravel.

Not just the yarn. It was me. I started to unravel.

Around week 17, I started dreading social media. Not because of trolls—though there were those—but because I felt like I had to keep performing being okay. I have a lot of baggage with “showing up” online (that’s a story for another day), and the pressure to keep it up slowly became a weight I didn’t want to carry.

I was still knitting. Just not posting about it. I’d share a few sweaters at a time instead of doing weekly updates. And somewhere in that shift, the momentum started to fade. The spark dulled. The cynicism kicked in.

Then, in the summer, a therapist said something that changed everything:

“Have you ever been tested for ADHD?”

It was a duh moment. But it also sent me spiraling a little.

Was I knitting because I loved it—or because I literally couldn’t sit still?

In August, I started taking ADHD meds. And suddenly… I didn’t want to knit.

I wanted to do everything else—organize the house, read books, finish projects that had sat untouched for months. My hands were still, for once. It felt like progress, but it also felt like something was missing.

A few months later, closer to the holidays, I picked up the needles again. Quietly.

I didn’t restart the challenge. I didn’t try to catch up.

I just… knit.

I didn’t end up making 52 sweaters. But I did make 40.

And honestly? That’s nothing to sneeze at.

This post doesn’t have a happy ending. Not yet.

But it does have a real one. And sometimes that’s even better.

In Part 2, I’ll tell you what happened next—how a quiet coffee chat and a very unexpected creative tool helped me stitch together a new way forward. 👀