We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jenn Rodriguez a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jenn, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

The day that I picked up learning how to knit was a random winter day in 2012. I had been working at a coffee shop at the time and it was around 12:30 am. There was a raging blizzard outside and I decided that it was a perfect time to go to Walmart and walk around. The good thing about was that Walmart was 5 minutes from work and about 3 minutes from my house. I somehow ended up in the yarn aisle and decided that I was going to learn to knit when I saw the learning kit. I bought the kit that came with a set of needles, book, CD and row counter and a skein of yarn.

Knowing what I know now, I think I would have gotten loads better at knitting if I didn’t put so much pressure on myself when things weren’t working out. I understood the fundamentals of knitting within 5 minutes of watching the videos that were on the CD included but as I progressed in learning different stitches it got increasingly harder and I used to get so frustrated that it wasn’t coming as easy as it had initially. Those frustrations become my biggest obstacle which is not being patient when it comes to me. Every time I say I’m going to take my time making anything I end up putting pressure on myself which derails me from working on this perfectionist streak that I have.

I picked up knitting for my mental health specifically for my anxiety and to let my feelings out in a healthy way. Knitting thought me patience after a while. I learned that I needed to be patient with myself, that being a perfectionist wasn’t always necessary. There were many of projects that I took apart when I dropped a stitch or I picked up too many. There’s still days where I can’t focus or I beat myself up when I knit or even when something isn’t working out in every day life. When my anxiety gets really bad, I pick up my knitting needles or crochet hook and I start working on a simple project that I can whip out in 2 hours so that I can work through my thoughts while focusing on something that comes like second nature to me now.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I was born in New Jersey, raised between Dominican Republic and New Jersey and now living in New York State. I’m a first generation Afro-Dominican American and I take pride in that. I got into writing when I was a little girl after getting lost for hours into all of the books that I had. I became a cosplayer because Halloween is one of my favorite holidays and I loved dressing up for them, when I got older and I realized that conventions were a thing and I could combine my love for comic books and dressing up I decided to work on my first cosplays which were Loki and MCU Scarlet Witch (there’s no digital evidence of that unless you look real hard) I became a streamer on Twitch almost two years ago after a failed attempt in 2018. I’ve been playing video games since my cousin in Dominican Republic let me play Super Mario Brothers on his SNES.

With my crafting I’m always willing to do something for someone if they ask and I’m able to do the pattern. I’m not afraid to say I can’t do things and I usually recommend clients to other creators in that type of situations. I deliberately don’t promote my fiber art creations because I picked up the craft for my mental health and I’m a big believer that not every little thing you do has to be monetized. Same thing goes for my cosplaying; I get a lot of help from friends and YouTube videos when I decide to work on things so I’m not comfortable wanting to pick up commissions with that as well.

As for streaming I think I decided to stream me playing video games because I felt as though it would be nice to talk to other people that loved gaming as much as I do. My platform stands on raising the voices of other marginalized voices that don’t usually get the spotlight, bring awareness to racism, privilege and LGBTQ+ rights. I’m proud of the small little community that I’ve managed to cultivate because I learn from them as much as they learn from me. I also just want to have fun and relax because the real world is already hard enough so if I can provide a bit of peace to people for a little bit then I’ve done what I set out to do.

One of my proudest moment was raising 300 dollars for Planned Parenthood of Central and Western NY in honor of my grandmother who passed away of breast cancer when I was kid. We as people deserve to have places to go get medical care regardless of where you are financially.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Society can start putting money back into the arts programs as much as they do for sports. The stigma that the arts do not produce money or whatever should also be spoken about as well. Nurturing that love for the arts is what makes the world go round. I think that if we didn’t have arts that this world would be boring. Even if you don’t plan on having a career in the arts picking it up even as a hobby is great because it can potentially help you for what you want to do for the future.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

Helping people and talking about mental health within the Latine community is also a goal that I’m trying to push through even in a small scale. We have this stigma that we shouldn’t talk about mental health that if you keep yourself busy and you pray, that everything will be okay and that’s not always the truth. The Latine community is nortorius on refusing to get outside help and I refuse to bring that on to the future generations so while my generation works on breaking that we tell the future generations its okay to speak about it so we can hopefully get the help that is needed. Also just speaking about the racism and colorism in the Latine community is on the forefront for me because I’ve had more people surprised at the fact that these things are happening.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: instagram.com/itsjennpossible
• Twitter: twitter.com/itsjennpossible

Image Credits
JeffZoetVisuals (Instagram) ItsJennPossible