Recreating a knitted jacket from an old blurry photo

This is what I will knit after I finish the three projects that are still on my needles........

From time to time I share vintage knitting patterns, because I think there is something special about those old designs!

We came across an old photo a while back. It was a photo of my husband in the yearbook of the local history club. When he was approximately Mischievous-And-A-Half-Years-Old, standing on the steps in front of a house together with other members of his family:

My husband looked at it and said “Oh yes, I remember that kofte. My sister Bjørg had knitted it for me and I loved it so much”.

Reminder:
Kofte is the Norwegian word for a knitted jacket in stranded colourwork technique.

This immediately sparked an idea in me.

I wanted to find the vintage pattern for this kofte and knit one for my husband!

I engaged the help of a very friendly Norwegian Facebook group called “Koftegruppa” (The Kofte Group), a community dedicated to collecting vintage Norwegian kofte patterns and making a searchable system where people can find old knitting patterns.

Koftegruppa does a tremendous job. And they are ALWAYS online. It usually takes less than a minute from a question is posted before a friendly member responds with a helpful hint, whether it is to sniff out a pattern from an old blurry photograph, or to remember the name of a particular pattern, or for advice on yarn, buttons, steeking, whatever the kofte related question, they’ve got the answer!

Their work has resulted in “Koftearkivet”, a website with a registry of over 6000 vintage knitting patterns! They even have a possibility for people around the world to join, look here. The patterns are all in Norwegian, but for experienced knitters there is still a lot of inspiration in the archive.

Back to my quest:

I posted the photo above in the facebook group, and some friendly member very quickly told me that this vintage pattern is called Glåmos:

Problem solved!

Now, to get the colours right.

My husband remembers that there was a bit of green in the jacket, so I found some images of other people’s recreations of this cosy old jacket.

Images of different versions of Glåmos kofte

I decided I would mix green and grey, like this:

I haven’t decided if I’ll do the light grey or the medium grey, but the green and white are definitely going to be in the mix. Perhaps leaning a little bit towards the lighter grey, to create more contrast between the pattern sections.

Here is the pattern for the design, if you want to create something based on this design:

Glåmos pattern

I am so excited to start this project, and I know my husband will love having a replica of the jacket he loved so much when he was a boy.

Have you ever recreated a jumper or jacket based on inspiration from an old photograph?