TNNA seated a new Board of Directors this past fall 2023! We welcome Cynthia Spencer as President, Liz Sytsma as Vice President, Heather Metzger as Secretary, and Sunni Scrivner as Treasurer. They look forward to serving the organization! Since going on hiatus in 2020, your TNNA board has been working behind the scenes to keep the association alive and in good standing. We are in the process of rebuilding this membership website, with more content being added regularly, and the board are excited to help TNNA move towards its next chapter.
CYNTHIA SPENCER: Cynthia loves all parts of the fiber world. She learned how to sew as a child from her mother, and to knit as an adult from a local yarn shop. These yarn-shop lessons developed her love and appreciation for local yarn shops. After earning a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology, she immediately opened a fiber-arts shop, Stitch Your Art Out. Twenty years later, she's never looked back. She’s also designed over 100 knitting patterns for her pattern company, Really Clear Designs. Her objective is to help yarn-shop owners teach skills to knitters, from beginning through advanced, in a relaxing, enjoyable way. She has also taught many classes in past years at TNNA shows, and she looks forward to finding ways to help the organization continue shop-owner education and support, along with bringing together all levels of the yarn industry. If you have questions or thoughts for TNNA, please send a note to hello@tnna.org.
LIZ SYTSMA: The owner of Wild Hand, a local yarn shop in Philadelphia, Liz has created a community that believes in the magic of fiber craft. Liz arrived at the yarn shop world after a career in the nonprofit arts and culture sector where she helped create CultureWorks Greater Philadelphia, a Model A Fiscal Sponsor. She brings to TNNA the business design/development, community engagement, equity-building, fiscal management, nonprofit leadership, and creativity that was a part of her work in the nonprofit sector for many years. She's looking forward to supporting the re-development of TNNA into member-centric organization that supports folks across the industry in a way that is useful and meaningful to the day-to-day lives of local yarn shops. Liz has an MBA from Cornell University and loves a good spreadsheet.
HEATHER METZGER: Heather owns a local yarn shop, Kid Ewe Knot, and loves everything fiber. She keeps her shop humming with classes and events. This year, for example, she has coordinated the Pittsburgh Satellite Crochet Coral Reef project, a unique community initiative that encourages people to come together and create something beautiful. The project involves many people creating hyperbolic shapes using crochet and combining them into a singular coral reef that will be displayed in the Carnegie Museum of Art. She enjoys dyeing yarn for her shop, and helping her customers become expert knitters. Her private lessons fill daily, for weeks ahead!
SUNNI SCRIVNER: Sunni Scrivner is a knitter, pattern designer, yarn dyer, teacher and the owner of Yarn in Eureka, California. Sunni opened Yarn in the spring of 2008. She has guided the shop as it has grown steadily over the past 15 years. She loves teaching and has taught knitting classes for more than 20 years. She has been designing knitting patterns for 10 years as Sweet Shop Patterns. In 2020, Sunni founded the Have A Ball Fall Crawl; a virtual yarn crawl that takes place across North America. In 2021, Sunni took on the adventure of creating her own 100% local yarn created from wool from a local sheep ranch. Sweet Shop Yarn is the result of that project. In January of 2023, she took over Tributary Yarns and is now dyeing yarn for the shop. Sunni loves wool and color, so dyeing yarn and owning a yarn shop is her idea of the best possible job.
COURTNEY KELLEY: Along with her business partner, Kate Gagnon Osborn, Courtney founded Kelbourne Woolens in 2008. Their primary focus is creating yarn with accessibility, quality, and functionality. The yarns are meant to be worked with, worn, and enjoyed by all, with as few barriers to entry as possible. Courtney has been the TNNA President well past her tenure, keeping the Association alive during the COVID pandemic and subsequent suspension of member services. She is thrilled to have a team with fresh vision bring TNNA back to life with a renewed mission and spirit.
