Beyond Knitting
The Unsinkable Sybil’s
Jeanetta Osterhoudt, the owner of Sybil’s Yarn Shop in Milford, N.Y., was sound asleep on July 18, 2025. At 2:30 a.m., she got a call from an old work buddy. She wasn’t awake enough to answer and he left a message.
“If there’s anything you need, please reach out. I know this is a hard time right now,” he said.
“And I was like, what is he talking about?
“I call him back and I go, ‘Dude, what’s going on?’ He says, ‘your building’s burning down.’
“At 2:35, I was standing in front of the fire. The third floor was in the second floor. I just literally cried for 15 minutes and I watched my place burn. There were so many dreams in there. There were so many possibilities.”
In this corner of rural New York, Sybil’s is an institution. It was started by Jeanetta’s mom Sybil in two small barns near their house. Sybil says it started in 1973. Jeanetta knows it was 1984—but will back her mom up if she has to.
In 2017, the shop moved to Milford, which is the Hallmark ideal of a small Upstate town. There’s one traffic light at the crossroads of the two main roads. There you’ll find a general store, the yarn shop, a fire station, the library, and the post office.
Two of those are now gone.
Jeanetta and Sybil’s in happier times.
In Milford, there was room for Sybil’s to hold classes. And because the town is between Cooperstown (where the Baseball Hall of Fame is) and Oneonta (where the colleges are), tourists and locals frequently drove past and dropped in.
What kept them coming back was Jeanetta.
“In the knitting world, people who knit Continental think they do it right. People who knit English think they do it right. Anytime someone would come in and say ‘well, you’re knitting wrong,’ I‘d say, ‘Nope. There’s no such thing as wrong.’
“I let people be who they were as knitters, as crocheters, and we really developed a wonderful environment here. It became a safe space for people,” she said.
When Jeanetta went to sleep on July 17, the rest of the year’s classes were figured out. The bills were paid up. Then she drove to the shop and watched it burn.
“The first thing I thought about was Lizz Murdock from Dark Sea Yarn. She’d been there the weekend before and brought me a hand-knit sweater out of her hand-dyed yarn. We were going to do a knit-along with it and it was going to be amazing.
“And I thought, how am I ever going to replace that? I can’t replace that. I can’t replace all the hard work.
“Then I thought okay, well, I guess I just waitress now. I guess I rebuild. I was moving through emotions very quickly.
“I also remember thinking to myself, well, it’s 5:30. It’s starting to sprinkle a little bit. I guess I’ll just go home and get in bed. I don’t have to go to work today.
“And I went home and that’s all I could do was just kind of lay in bed and go, yeah, now what? I just lost my job, my investment, my livelihood, and my income.”
It would have been easy to give up. A yarn shop isn’t critical to life in a small town, even if the yarn people think it is. Rebuilding would be hard—and yarn shops are not known to be money-making powerhouses.
“But the outpouring of support has been amazing,” Jeanetta said. “People want Sybil’s back, because I think like many yarn stores, it was more than just a place to buy yarn. It was a place to connect with other people.”
As Jeanetta was thinking through how and where she’d re-open, Emilie Rigby, a local shop owner and tin ornament maker, organized a fundraiser. The donations quickly exceeded the space Rigby had, then she moved over to the local Farmer’s Market building.
Folding tables were full of yarn, fabric, and tools.
There were raffles for big ticket items. Plus, there was a box you could just put a donation in, if you didn’t have a need for any of the goodies.
At the end of the night, the crew sat on the floor and counted the donations. It was just under $17,000.
“I just started crying, because I don’t know how long the insurance company will take. If the fundraiser hadn’t happened, if that community wasn’t there, I don’t know what would have happened.
“It was truly overwhelming,” Jeanetta said.
Right now, a smaller version of Sybil’s is in a storefront next to Rigby’s. The donations gave Jeanetta the capital to get some stock in and pay the rent.
Jeanetta has started planning what the next iteration of Sybil’s will look like. It’ll go in the same spot as the old Sybil’s. The hope is that it’ll be no more than a year before the grand opening. But the timing is up to the insurance agents and contractors.
Friends have offered to set Jeanetta up with a Go Fund Me. She’s resistant.
“I’ll be honest, at this point, I feel like I’m grifting. Then someone pulled on my heart strings, and was like, ‘people want to help. You have to let them help you.’
“I’m not exactly comfortable with it, but I do have a Venmo,” she said.
Above all else, Sybil’s will continue on, despite the fire, in some form or fashion. That’s because of the community and Jeanetta herself.
“I’m an eternal optimist. I’m just ready to move forward because I could dwell. What are you going to do? I cry enough about other crap. There is more than enough to go around,” she said.
And so we knit on.
Wow!!!!! I just found this story so moving. THANK YOU for this. Is there a way to make a donation if so moved?
If you do Venmo, there’s a link near the bottom of the story.
Thanks for sharing, been to the store.
Thanks for writing the article! We are so excited to have Sybil’s as our neighbor. Pioneer Street in Cooperstown is becoming one of the craftiest streets in upstate NY!
This was a heartwarming story. Thank you .
Crying for the dreams lost in this fire. Clicked the links – Dark Sea Yarn is gorgeous (and irresistible) and Jeanetta is amazing! So resilient! Her fb page videos show her spirit! Made a Venmo donation and hope her store is rebuilt soon!
I should have added – Rigby Handicraft has beautiful items too!
Thank you for that heartwarming story about community. Drove by the heap of rubble that used to be a beautiful old building housing Sybil’s just last Saturday on my way to Cooperstown. Terrible sight even though I was prepared because my friend who lives nearby had told me about the fire. I had gone to the yarn shop when I visited her in July and bought some lovely yarn. Glad to hear Jeanette is rebuilding.
I visited Sybil’s in April. What struck was how welcoming and helpful Jeanette and her staff were. Rebuilding is hard, but I look forward to visiting the new Sybil’s.
This is a community and I love it!
I’m so sorry that happened. Disaster sucks. I know (hurricane flood here)
But if you’re going to have a disaster, fire is better than flood. It’s a sick thing to say, but unfortunately it’s true. I’m glad to hear that your community pulled together to help in such a big way
The community support for this shop is so impressive and heartwarming. The loom, spinning wheel, sewing machines for raffle are awesome donations. I wish Jeanetta all the best and it would be fun to read a f/u letter when she gets her business going again.
Beautiful story about community and courage! I very much needed this example of people acting with compassion and grace. Thank you and good luck to Jeanetta.
What a generous community!
Beautifully written. I can’t think of a better tribute to Jeanetta and her indomitable spirit!
The heart of America: the donations, the determination, the entrepreneurship. In my opinion the working together of both liberal and conservative principles. I see it all the time in everyday life. Let’s Please work together to preserve and grow what’s best in our country. The divisions are challenging and run deep but I believe we can do it if we want to. Maybe just by one community at a time. At least I gosh darn hope so.
We love Sybil and we love Jean.
Thank you for sharing this story.
It was suuuuch a lovely shop. I hold my knitting retreat in Cooperstown, and many of the attendees visited her shop (I did too) and raved about it. I reached out to her last month to invite her to be part of the event. That’s when Jeanetta emailed me back to tell me about the fire. I was heart sick. It was one of those places that just felt like home the second you walked in. I look forward to seeing what the future holds. I’m sure she will make a new home just as lovely as the last
We went there when we were at your Cooperstown retreat last Spring. Such a lovely store, and when I emailed her about some patterns, she replied right away. I do hope she is all set to go very soon. Knitters are wonderful people!
I hope everyone who reads this considers clicking the Venmo link and donating the price of a skein of yarn to help Jeanetta rebuild.
This community is working at its best and for a great outcome. Blessings to Jeanetta as she builds her business back to opening a new store.
So proud of my niece.
How wonderful to let us know so we can help, too, even if we don’t live nearby.
Thanks for the Venmo link!