Hannah's Sweater

Each year. Gulf Island Secondary School is host to international student from around the world.  The high school for the islands is located on Salt Spring and so the students are billeted with island families.  Some students do not survive the cultural shock as they transition from large, cosmopolitan centers to a rural environment which has no access to the conveniences of McDonald's or WalMart.  The only 'chain store' on the island just folded because of lack of customers.  In the wintertime, Salt Spring is home to about 10,000 residents. That number increases to 16,000 in the summer with the arrival of summer residents and tourists.

Hannah is a young woman of 16 years of age who came to the island from a large, urban center in Germany.  She was billeted with a member of the SSI Weavers and Spinners Guild on a small homestead on the island's south end. Her hostess also operates a weaving studio and so Hanna became intimately acquainted with fiber processing and decided she would like to take home a sweater knit with Salt Spring wool.  We worked together on the design and settled on a Cowichan style sweater with a maple leaf motif.

Sketches of Hannah's sweater.

Hannah settled on the shorter version on the right.  Three weeks later the sweater was ready, just in time for her return to Germany at the end of the school year in June.

Hannah's sweater

The maple leaf motif was a gift from the Cowichan knitters in their famous sweaters and has been used by several generations of knitters from Salish communities.

I asked Hannah what she would most miss about Salt Spring Island.  She said 'going shopping in her pajamas'.