YOLANDA BOOKER
With over 40+ years of experience as a maker, Yolanda is known for her creative handmade knitted and crocheted accessories. She enjoys sharing her creative passion through teaching (at Wild Hand and other places!) and coaching. She is skilled at mending and offers mending services for knit and crocheted items. Yolanda resides in Philadelphia and has been an invaluable member of the Wild Hand team since the shop opened in 2019.

GINA GILES
Gina is a painter and fiber artist with a background in photography and digital art. She graduated from Moore College of Art & Design where she studied Photography and Digital Arts. Drawing inspiration from her wide-ranging inner states and her peaceful communion with nature, Gina manifests a vibrant representation of her reality as an African American woman, feeling her way through adulthood and the nuances involved in one's personal take on femininity, empowerment, independence and vulnerability.

CARLIE MUESSIG
Carlie is a self-taught knitter, avid cross stitcher, and natural dye experimenter hailing from Richmond, VA. Carlie values building community through their fiber-based hobbies and has an interest in craft history and material sustainability.

COPPER SANTIAGO
Copper Santiago is a multidisciplinary artist and circus performer currently paying rent in Philadelphia. Born and raised in New York City, Copper learned to knit in third grade from her mother and has been knitting during recess (and the adult equivalents) ever since. Copper has a BFA in socially engaged art from Goddard College where she studied the intersections between fiber arts and circus. She makes work from her inherited, and cultivated hunger for agency and expression. Her favorite food is arugula.

LIZ SYTSMA
Shop creator + owner, Liz is a lifelong fiber tinkerer. She has infused Wild Hand with the community engagement, equity-building, and creativity that was a part of her work in the nonprofit arts + culture sector for many years (she helped start and lead CultureWorks Greater Philadlephia). Liz studied fine art and business undergrad and earned an MBA from Cornell. This is the first yarn shop she’s worked at. Liz loves color and lives around the corner from the shop with her mostly female human + animal family.

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 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. We recognize the power, privilege and responsibility of owning a business. We commit to challenging systems of oppression by regularly examining our own policies and practices: calling-in folks for conversation, listening to others, and reading, while graciously giving, receiving, and responding to the feedback we receive. Most importantly, we commit to using our privilege to benefit the lives of others. Below are some of the ways we are committed to doing this work:

• We share physical and digital space with regard for our collective wellbeing — taking care of each other and creating spaces that are safe and inclusive for the beautiful Wild Hand community.
  
  
• We’re on a learning curve and mistakes happen. We take responsibility for the harm our words or actions may cause.
  
  
• Black Lives Matter. The fiber community, like all communities, has a history of systemic oppression and appropriation. We want to be a part of the repair, not the damage. We prioritize directing resources to BIPoC/PoC and LGBTQ+ folks in the fiber community, and to allies for whom social justice is central to their work. This includes our staff, teaching artists, designers, contractors, customers, and suppliers.
  
  
• We welcome a range of cultural standards and expectations — being flexible, equitable, and open to the many different ways people talk, move, shop, and express themselves in the world.
  
  
• Gender is self-determined. We don’t make assumptions about a person’s gender or pronouns based on cultural norms.
  
  
• We listen to, believe in, and learn from the LYS [local yarn store] experiences of folks from marginalized communities.
  
  
• Smaller able-bodies are not better bodies. We maintain our physical space in a way that is accessible and comfortable for all bodies and abilities. We promote and create samples from patterns that are size-inclusive.
  
  
• We welcome all crafts, skill levels, and materials in our space — regardless of where they were purchased.
  
  
• We do not support products and content that commodifies and/or appropriates the practices, ideas, expressions, and histories of other cultures. We will identify, acknowledge, and call-in for conversation our current and future working partners if cultural appropriation is part of the dynamic.
  
  
• Access to economic resources is different for everyone, so we create opportunities for economic justice through free and sliding scale resources. We donate products and skills to local community organizations, and we adjust our margins with suppliers that have just started out and/or have traditionally been overlooked by the industry.
  
  
• We grow our team’s compensation and benefits as our business grows — together we share in the success of Wild Hand. 

The Wild Hand commitments are based on many things: our collective experiences in the nonprofit sector, our work with cooperatives, our time in yarn shops, as folks from marginalized communities, and as folks with privilege. Our commitments are created by the hopes and dreams for what a work and community space can and should be. They are (and will always be) a work in progress. Your feedback is encouraged in this space (and necessary for our collective growth). It is our mutual responsibility to ensure that our commitments are upheld and improved-upon regularly. If you experience a break in these commitments please reach out to the shop at liz[at]wild-hand.com or anonymously through the mail or our suggestion box in the shop entryway.