A local fiber artist has begun raising money via Go Fund Me to start a shop called The Yarn Bodega in the SOuth Bronx, where she will sell her own handspun yarn and other supplies.
The Bronx is the only borough without a dedicated yarn shop, according to Ismelda Molina-Rodriguez, 41. While the borough is famous for its music and visual art, fiber arts like knitting, weaving and crochet are often overlooked.
But for creatives like Molina-Rodriguez, 41, those crafts are part of the broader legacy of people who make beautiful handmade goods. Feeling this connection, “I felt a renewed sense of purpose that filled my soul with passion,” she said on her Go Fund Me page.
Molina-Rodriguez, who grew up in Washington Heights and has lived in the South Bronx for 23 years, told the Bronx Times that crafts were not a lifelong practice for her. She started learning crochet in adulthood after the common realization: “I need a hobby.”
As it turned out, she easily took to crochet and has called it her “saving grace.” She enjoyed that the projects are portable and result in a fun, useful, tangible product — and the barrier to entry is relatively low, since only a few supplies are needed to get started.
Molina-Rodriguez has taken her passion and run with it, even spinning and dyeing her own yarn using what’s known as a cross-armed “Turkish” spindle and wheel, as well as a portable e-spinner.
She said she sometimes spins yarn in public — and has even taken the e-spinner to the Dominican Republic to spin on the beach.
“It’s actually very therapeutic,” she said.
While fiber arts are a relatively new hobby for Molina-Rodriguez, her penchant for entrepreneurship began in her youth, as her father owned a neighborhood grocery store in the Bronx for 30 years.
Molina-Rodriguez was inspired to start The Yarn Bodega after the Michael’s store at the Terminal Market closed in 2020. The craft store was the only place like it in the neighborhood — and she figured she wasn’t the only one missing it.
The Yarn Bodega will start as an online shop with occasional meetups for makers, she said. The shop will first sell Molina-Rodriguez’s own yarn and gradually bring in products made by others in her network, plus some affordable commercial yarns.
Once the store is open, it will be more than just a place to buy supplies. Molina-Rodriguez hopes it will become a community hub where she will emphasize “having a safe space where you can explore these different crafts, play with different types of yarns and have camaraderie with fellow makers, whether you’re a beginner or an expert.”
The meetups will “start building that community organically” so that The Yarn Bodega will already have a following when it opens.
Molina-Rodriguez has started to scout locations in the South Bronx that are convenient to transit, parking and other small businesses.
The Go Fund Me, launched in November, has raised almost $3,000 so far. That’s enough to establish an LLC, which she anticipates will be ready by the end of April.
Until the online shop is up and running, Molina-Rodriguez hopes that Bronx knitters, weavers and crocheters will start coming out of the woodwork.
“People in the Bronx are so resilient,” she said. “They can make anything out of nothing.”
You can follow her progress toward the goal on Instagram @TheYarnBodega.
Reach Emily Swanson at eswanson@schnepsmedia.com or (646) 717-0015. For more coverage, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @bronxtimes
