Sylvia Olsen

She is a master storyteller, historian, knitter, designer, and award-winning, best-selling author. She spent seventeen years buying and selling Cowichan sweaters in a shop behind her home on the Tsartlip First Nation Reserve near Victoria, BC. Since then she has studied the history of the knitting tradition and how it fits into the broader scope of knitting traditions around the world. With her daughter, Joni, Sylvia works in Salish Fusion, the Olsen family business that creates knitted things. Sylvia’s latest book Unravelling Canada tells the story, sometimes conflicted, sometimes celebratory, of her six week knitting tour across the country and examines the natural spaces and cultural geography of this great land through a knitting lens.

Lecture – Finding the Scottish connections to the Cowichan sweater – the anatomy of cultural fusion

Sylvia Olsen is a knitting historian. She is curious about connections—the way one knitting tradition borrows and blends with others. Her life and her studies have been a deep immersion into Coast Salish knitting and she will share the fascinating links between Scottish knitting traditions such as Fairisle and the famous Cowichan sweater from the west coast of British Columbia. Her presentation is a life-affirming account of how knitting unites us and about the knitting ties that bind us together.