SYLVIA OLSEN 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: A Knitting Odyssey“, tells the story, sometimes conflicted, sometimes celebratory, of her six week knitting tour across the country that examines the natural spaces and cultural geography of this great land through a knitting lens. In her presentation Sylvia will talk about the history of the Cowichan Sweater and the Coast Salish knitters, one of Canada’s most exceptional knitting stories.