Ashford Dealer Spotlight – Wild Hand
Welcome to our second post in our new Blog series – the Ashford Dealer Spotlight! Where we will be highlighting Ashford dealers from around the world, giving you a chance to learn more about their journeys and businesses. We’re excited to introduce you to these amazing individuals, and we hope you enjoy getting to know them better. Our second dealer in the Spotlight is Liz Sytsma of Wild Hand, located in Philadelphia, USA.
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NAME: Liz Sytsma
BUSINESS NAME: Wild Hand
Tell us a little about your business and how it all began?
Wild Hand is a community that believes in the magic of fiber craft: to bring together people who share a vision of an imaginative and just world. We are a place for fiber folk! Nestled in Philadelphia’s Mt. Airy neighborhood, we offer materials, education, and community to encourage curiosity for fiber craft: weaving, crochet, knitting, felting, spinning, dyeing, knotting, stitching, fleece processing, and more! We believe that the wellbeing of our fiber community — including the people, land, and animals that create the supplies we sell — is more important than anything else. With that in mind, we carefully select the supplies we carry and promote. Read more about our Community Commitment here. Inspired by comforting design, the wonder and utility of natural materials, and always being on a learning curve, Wild Hand is a place where folks of all ages and abilities are in good company. Our community explores, plans, learns, and makes in different ways. We believe that the care and intention our hands put into creating something happily lingers in the materials, connecting us to each other and generations of fiber traditions before us.
Opened in 2019 by Liz Sytsma, a Mt. Airy resident and fiber tinkerer, Wild Hand was created out of a love for craft, community engagement, and business design. Before creating Wild Hand, Liz co-created and was the Executive Director of Philadelphia nonprofit Cultureworks Greater Philadelphia; a Model A Fiscal Sponsor and (one of Philadelphia’s first) coworking spaces for the fine and performing arts, historic preservation, media, and design. Liz had never worked in a yarn shop (most of our team had not until Wild Hand was created!) but spent much of her career writing and teaching business planning, creating programming and community engagement strategies, managing finances, building teams, and becoming a generalist when it comes to running a small business. Out of a love for this community of makers and the desire to bring something warm, happy, and welcoming to the neighborhood Wild Hand was born! Liz is a knitter, spinner, weaver, sewist, and crocheter. She lives a quick three block walk from the shop with her husband, daughters, cat, dog, gecko, and three fish.
What motivated you to become an Ashford dealer?
The intention was always to have Wild Hand be a supply shop for many fiber crafts; a reflection of the multi-craft community that makes up most of our customer base. We found our customers practice more than one craft and continue to add and expand their skills across fiber crafts and combining crafts. For instance, our weavers are inclined to take a drop spindle class and our felters want to learn how to blend wool to achieve nuanced colors and textures in their work. Everything Wild Hand does is with our customer’s creative aspirations at the center; from decisions on which vendors to work with to the shop merchandising … all in the interest of our curious and creative community. Ashford was a perfect fit for us; beautifully made, practical, reliable, and thoughtfully produced equipment that we could stand-by as a vendor and as makers ourselves! We were especially motivated by Ashford’s values around sustainability; your philosophy to respect nature and work ethically and sustainably aligns with Wild Hand’s own Community Commitment. In embarking on a relationship with Ashford, we were reassured by the incredible customer service available to us and our customer community.
How long have you been working with Ashford products, and what has your journey been like so far?
Personally I’ve worked with Ashford products since starting Wild Hand six years ago! Since then I have worked with wheels, looms, and carding equipment in my personal practice and through the shop. I keep a Kiwi III at my home and it’s become a permanent fixture in our living room; I love how beautifully it fits and the conversations that start when we have visitors (especially when friends of my children stop by and want a quick demo or to give it a try!).
Which Ashford products are your customers most excited about?
Our customers love the Kiwi spinning wheels!! We have sold countless wheels over time and enjoy more than anything seeing a customer come first to a drop spindle workshop at Wild Hand (always taught with Ashford student spindles😉 then join us for a wheel workshop, purchase a wheel, and come back months later with a sweater-in-progress made from their handspun yarn. The joy and pride we witness in those customer journeys is so fulfilling; we can’t get enough of it!
Can you share a memorable customer story or piece of feedback that really stood out to you about Ashford products?
We often run workshops in collaboration with fellow local businesses in Philadelphia and specifically in our neighborhood here in Mt. Airy (we actually have two thriving yarn shops and two sewing shops!). I recall a mother and daughter taking one of our collaborative classes; they were learning to weave on an Ashford Rigid Heddle Loom at Wild Hand with our amazing teaching artist Richie Wilde Metzger-Lopez and then heading over to our sewing shop neighbors for students to sew their handwoven fabric into a shirt. The daughter was celebrating a birthday and this was a part of her gift. The two fell in love with the craft together and left with looms purchased (and sewing machines from the sewing shop!). I loved that they connect and deepened their relationship through fiber craft and that we can always rely on Ashford to make equipment that we know will work with ease when new weavers join us.
What advice would you give to someone just starting their crafting journey, whether it’s spinning, weaving, or any other fibrecraft?
Find a local yarn shop where you feel at home and welcomed for where you are in your crafting journey. Learning new things can be incredibly vulnerable and if you can find a local yarn shop that accepts you for just who and where you are you will flourish in your craft and make some friends along the way. I’m so proud of Wild Hand’s community; it is incredibly creative, nurturing, inclusive, diverse, inspiring, flexible, encouraging, and fun! We offer monthly $10 beginner community knitting and crochet classes just for this reason; to help support folks in those vulnerable early times of learning something new – we hope we can catch their insecurities and concerns and lift them up so that they continue on with the crafts and are able to experience all the wonderful benefits of handcraft work.
How do you stay inspired and connected with the crafting community? Any tips for keeping your creativity flowing?
I try to get outside of my go-to-crafts and our neighborhood. I like to take classes at other shops (heading to a weaving shop at my friend Rachel’s place here in Philly this weekend, Weaver House … also an Ashford dealer!) and tinker with color and texture outside of yarn. I recently celebrated my 43rd birthday and some friends bought me supplies to start painting again after a 20 year break. I studied painting in undergrad as well as business; my brain has always been mashing-up these two interests and Wild Hand is a great place to land with a love for color and making alongside the need to nerd-out on the numbers and systems. Living in a big city makes exploration a bit easier with close access to so many incredible cultural institutions, shops, and artists. Most of my close friends in Philly are artists; working in photography, glass, writing, painting, acting, and jewelry making … just being around them and their process lights the creative fire in me.
Where can people find you – online, social media, or at your store?
You can find us at wild-hand.com as well as over on Instagram at @_wildhand_ or Facebook @wildwildhand also in Philadelphia’s Mt. Airy neighborhood at 606 Carpenter Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19119. We hope you’ll come visit us!
Is there anything else you’d like to share with the Ashford community or any upcoming events we should know about?
There are two things that we are extra proud of at Wild Hand! We created the first Little Free Fiber Library, which has grown beyond a cute little “free yarn” box on the facade of our shop into a larger-scale donation program where we take in donated yarn, tools, and equipment and with the help of volunteers organize the donations and redistribute them to community groups. We have donated oh-so-much yarn to afterschool programs, recovery centers, community groups, charity projects, and so neighbors that need a free yarny boost to their day.
We are also very proud of our very public Community Commitment. This is a statement, created by the Wild Hand team in 2020 based on our collective experiences, values, priorities, and the observations we’ve made when it comes to who we do and do not want to be as a business and in service to our community.
