Olympics and "Knitting history" - Cowichan Knitting and Starsky and Hutch

 Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics

Cowichan knitting 

The Olympic design sweater you can see being presented below to BC’s premier Gordon Campbell, at left, and Jacques Rogges, IOC president, at right.

Well-known Cowichan knitter Emily Sawyer-Smith.  Her book about knitting : Working with Wool: A Coast Salish Legacy and the Cowichan Sweater.
Chowichan knitting is a from knitting development by the Chowichan people of southeastern Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

These sweaters show up in popular culture all the time, though most of them are cheap knockoffs – to a British Columbian eye, the ones in The Big Lebowski and Starsky and Hutch are obvious fakes (or are simply what is known as curling sweaters). What makes a Cowichan sweater authentic? It’s not necessarily even absolute adherence to traditional motifs. It’s more the quality, colour and weight of the wool. The fibres should be natural in colour, not dyed; and they should have the banded arms with traditional Salish weaving patterns.

"Aboriginal Knitted art" Cowichan Knitted design
It’s not necessarily even absolute adherence to traditional motifs. It’s more the quality, colour and weight of the wool. The fibres should be natural in colour, not dyed; and they should have the banded arms with traditional Salish weaving patterns.

POLYVORE