I appreciate the enthusiasm here but this doesn't begin to touch on the superiority of the Cowichan knitter. That is, to say, the INDIGENOUS CANADIAN KNITTER who is by all accounts the finest and most technically accomplished knitter in the world. You may keep your "Fair Isle" your "Setesdal-gensern" and your "Svenska Mönster" and even your fine needle-work done in the Baltics on four or six or even eight needles at a time, the Cowichan knitter solved the most basic of problems: how to "carry" a color in a multicolored pattern seemingly in midair, without attaching it to an adjacent element.
I come from a family of knitters, my aunt owned a knit store in Ballard where Norwegian sweaters knit by hand out of Norwegian Triplex wool were the vestments of the elite, and the technique involved in "stranded color" knitting, as exemplified by this Cowichan sweater, which allows a strand to languish until needed, avoiding costly carries which use up a lot of wool and need to be fastened down on the back, was quite beyond even the best knitters in the shop. Note the extravagant distance between each iteration of the eagle element, the yarn is not carried in the traditional sense but is simply dropped and picked up when needed. The eagles truly fly, suspended in a firmament of undyed white.
Cowichan knits are the finest in the world. God bless Canada 🍁
