Conjuring 2: Enfield Knits

The second Conjuring movie focuses on events that took place in Enfield, London, in the late 1970s, when Peggy Hodgson and her four kids were allegedly tormented by a poltergeist. A number of people studied the case, including Ed and Lorraine Warren, whose investigation is the central plot of Conjuring 2 (2016). The first half of the movie focuses on developing the haunting and watching the family dealing with all the events on one side of the world while Ed and Lorraine are dealing with their own challenges involving a certain pesky demon-nun who-shall-not-be-named. The Warrens travel to help the Hodgsons midway through the movie and more haunted shenanigans ensue.

Before Ed and Lorraine arrived on the scene, Maurice Grosse and Anita Gregory (played by Simon McBurney and Franka Potente, respectively) of The Society for Psychical Research (UK) were investigating the disturbances, as well as a number of others. These two are included in the film although the focus is on the Warrens' investigation. However, a mini-series called The Enfield Haunting which came out a year earlier (2015) focuses on Maurice Grosse's investigation (starring the fantastic Timothy Spall as Maurice Grosse) and is equally enGROSSing for different reasons. Guy Playfair is also portrayed in the mini-series, who wrote the 1980 book This House is Haunted: The Amazing Inside Story of the Enfield Poltergeist.

The Conjuring 2 is part of a series that focuses on Ed and Lorraine Warren, so we see a lot of their journey in this movie, whereas The Enfield Haunting is about Maurice Grosse's involvement with the case. The Conjuring 2 delivers on Hollywood scares and the Enfield Haunting focuses on slow burn story. Each offers a different explanation on the reason behind the haunting which brings a different tone to the film vs. series and each weave in the investigator's stories into the hauntings. Both are well worth the watch!

Let's get to the knit!

The knitwear in this movie should be listed in the credits--it has so much screen time. Much of it shows up in big blasts together, especially on the four kids. Ten minutes into the movie, siblings and friends cluster together wearing many a great knit (or crochet) hat (not to mention school vests).

Janet (red hat) and her friend, Camilla (white hat), are wearing a beret style hat, while older sister Margaret's features colorwork and a folded, ribbed brim. Billy's newsboy hat (right) and Johnny's beanie (left) appear to be crochet, rather than knit, and Johnny's looks like it might employ the granny stripe stitch, a simple stitch pattern where three (give or take) double crochets are crocheted into a three (or so) chain gap in the row below. Almost all feature a matching pom!

Knit (or crochet) the looks:

Top, L to R: Lazy Days Beret / photo & pattern credit: Heart Hook Home (crochet, free); Cygnus Beret / photo & pattern credit: CosyMakes (knit); Winter's Fern / photo & pattern credit: Trin-Annelie (knit);

Lazy Days Beret

Cygnus Beret

Winter's Fern Hat

Tundra Toque

Granny Square Crochet Hat

Perfect Stripe Newsboy Hat

Bottom, L to R: Tundra Toque / photo & pattern credit: The Petite Knitter (knit); Granny Square Hat / photo & pattern credit Crochet with Clare (crochet, free); Perfect Stripe Newsboy Hat / photo & pattern credit by KT and the Squid (crochet)

I AM being calm

And now for a cascade of cardigans! The moms are cardigan lovers in the Conjuring franchise. Here we see Peggy in her "I AM being calm" cinnamon cardigan (left) and her dusty pink "Demon broke our record player" cardigan (below).

Demon broke the record player

Knit the look:

Gin and Juice Cardigan

Hydrangea Cardigan

Warren Cardigan

L to R: Gin and Juice / photo & pattern credit: Thea Colman (knit); Hydrangea Cardigan / photo & pattern credit: Jennifer Owens (Interweave mag, knit) ; Warren / photo & pattern credit by Amy Miller (knit)

Ed and Lorraine get their cardi-snuggles on more than once, seen here contemplating the effect of demonic possession on the vocal chords (left) and cuddling post-plummet (below).

Lorraine's lace and cable cardigan is lush and cozy looking, with a hem that extends well past her hips, a generous collar, extra long sleeves and big buttons. It might be the holy grail of cardigans if it had pockets!

Ed's argyle motif is featured on the front and back of his zipper cardigan. Argyle patterns can be knit using stranded colorwork (carrying unused yarn colors behind work) or intarsia (color blocking). Modern patterns for garments knit with argyle colorwork are scarce these days but you can occasionally find vintage patterns designed with the argyle motif online. You can also work up a basic zippered cardigan and follow a separate argyle chart (such as these) to add the colorwork yourself to the front and back panels if you are clever!

If Ed's argyle ever goes out of fashion, he's covered with a spare. This low-key color-block cardi in grey and white is perfect for a snuggle with your wife after she just saved your ass from falling out a window and being impaled on a tree (in sickness and health, though, amirite?)

Conjure yourself one of these cardis:

L to R: Fleta / photo & pattern credit: Norah Gaughan (Berroco, knit); Fritillary / photo & pattern credit: Tonia Barry (knit) ; Carboy / photo & pattern credit: Jesse Loesberg (knit) ; Colorblock Zip Jacket / photo & pattern credit: Wallace Shaw (Tahki Yarns; knit)

Left: Silver Legacy Vest / photo & pattern credit: (crochet, free)

These are just the tip of the Conjuring (2) iceberg!

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Get Your Geek On:

Conjuring 2 vs The Enfield Haunting

Conjuring 2: History vs. Hollywood

Conjuring 2 movie trailer

Conjuring: the Devil Made Me Knit It

There are a series of films that take place in the "Conjuring Universe," including three movies about a creepy doll named Annabelle, a backstory about a demon nun, and an almost-entirely-stand-alone film about the curse of La Llorona. This is the first of a three-part horror-ific entry on The Conjuring movies. We'll focus solely on the main three films which feature Ed and Lorraine Warren and their adventures in exorcising victims of demonic possession: The Conjuring (2013), The Conjuring 2 (2016), and The Conjuring: the Devil Made Me Do It (2021).

Director James Wan has said he wants to "bring respect back to studio horror films" with his productions. Rather than moving from one scare to another with shallow caricatures and bad one-liners, Wan wants to reveal the heart of each major character and particularly focuses on the nature of the family relationships, so you are drawn into caring more about these characters. This gives the film more dimension overall but also making it even more engaging and frightening when the characters do go through the horrors as you root for them to succeed... or rather, survive!

Although The Conjuring movies are most assuredly horror films, a strong theme of love runs throughout them all. From the closeness of Ed and Lorraine's relationship, to the tenderness and empathy they show to the victims of possession and helping them to keep hold of their love for their families, to the devotion of the young couple in The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (DMMDI), it's just as much the power of love as it is the power of Christ that compels.

Enough of the mushy stuff. Let's get to the knit!

Debbie Does Stripes

There's remarkably little knitwear in DMMDI (I've heard the devil prefers Prada), especially compared to the first two Conjuring movies which are lousy with it. Other than a nondescript cardigan on Ed, it is only Debbie, the girlfriend of the possessed, who wears anything knit: a navy blue, machine-knit top with colorful stripes along the collar and cuffs. This looks like your basic ringer tee but with more stripes of color on the neck and arm bands.

The movie takes place in 1971 and the stripes seem on point for the era, yet this tee is understated enough to fit into most modern timelines without standing out too much, especially depending on color choices.

Knit the look:

L to R: Millatop / pattern & photo credit: Camilla Karlsen (knit - also available here); Nothin' but a Tshirt / pattern & photo credit: Alison Hansel (knit, free); Cropped to a Tee / pattern & photo credit: Nicole ThorsonKnits (knit); Better than Basic Ringer / pattern & photo credit: Stephanie Erin (crochet)

Stay tuned for The Conjuring 2!

We Go On ... for rows and rows

Fear is at once both a straightforward and complex emotion. When people think of horror movies, many may immediately think of the jump-scare-a-minute, I-Know-What-Michael-Myers-Did-Last-Summer-on-Elm-Street types that tend to invoke the most overt fear response: the instinct toward fight or flight when a jump scare succeeds in suckering you, but horror films can also invoke a sense of dread or disgust, as well as fascination.

For me, horror isn't just about that adrenaline rush. Horror takes me to my emotional limits. Good horror threatens to unmake me and the best horror takes me closest to the precipice: dangling me over the edge without actually dropping me into permanent insanity. A few have dropped me temporarily into the abyss--I have metaphorically bled out after some horror films and have learned what limits I don't want to go beyond. But still, going to those edges is what it's about for me. True joy and love do that for me as well--take me to my limits, that is. The heights of joy and love are just as precarious and can take me just as far, even if it's in the opposite direction, because I know that the higher I go, the farther I may fall.

can I write you a check?

The 2016 movie We Go On takes me to my most relentlessly visited cliff edge: the hope, fear, and fascination of what lies beyond death, particularly the possibility that nothing does. There are creeps, scares, and twists in this movie, and they exist alongside a larger, moving, and surprisingly well-acted story.

Miles is terrified of dying. Trauma early in his life plays out in his nightmares and generally plagues his waking life with anxiety. In an effort to combat his fear, he places an ad offering $30,000 for definitive proof of life after death (knowing full well he'll have to sift through a lot of fakes).

"it never misses"

"You know how every year or two there's a headline that pops up about an asteroid that's maybe on course to crash into Earth and kill us all, right? And then they say 'whoops, nevermind, it'll miss us. Death from space is cancelled.' And we get that relief? We go on about our lives like there's no asteroid.

But that's insane. Because really there is still an asteroid. And we should be afraid. Because we all have one coming and it's on a 100% guaranteed collision course with you. Your world will end. We don't get to know when. All we know for sure is that it never misses."

After several debunkings and disappointments, he responds to a voicemail message from an unknown caller that answers his question in a way he never expected, with a burden he can never be rid of.

The title We Go On seems to be in reference to the idea of our souls going on after death, and maybe it partially is, but it's also about the absurdity and necessity of going on about our lives even though we know that any day might be our last. Finding the reasons to continue to go on.

Let's get to the knit.

One of the people who answers Miles' ad is a reluctant medium. On their first meeting, she's wearing a black, rectangular shawl that features an overall diamond (or maybe it's squares, depending on how you wear it) pattern with stitches running through it that give a mesh or netted appearance.

We can see from the front view that long black fringe runs along both short ends of the rectangle but not along the long edge as we can see in the photo from the back.

It is difficult to tell the thickness or weight of yarn being used without being able to paw at the piece in person, but it seems likely that it is a fingering or lace weight yarn to get the fine, openwork lace in between the thicker outline of the squares. The fringe may be done with a thicker yarn or possibly doubled or tripled up.

This mesh/lace look can be created either with knit or crochet:

Top, L to R: Olive Diamonds / photo & pattern credit: Drops Design (crochet, free); Mini Bubbles / pattern by Kieran Foley (crochet), photo credit: chiaraz; Chaukor / photo & pattern credit: Sandhya S. (knit, free)

Bottom, L to R: Diamond Mesh Lace Wrap / photo & pattern credit: Krista Werbil (knit); Diamond Lace Wrap / photo & pattern credit: June Gilbank (crochet)

When Miles visits the medium again, she is wearing a knit vest with an elaborate pattern on the back. The top half of the vest is ribbed in something like a 1x4 pattern, where most of the fabric highlights the purl stitches, creating knit ridges. These are so pronounced that they may be knit through the back loop that makes the ridges stand out even more.

This technique is known as twisted rib (not to be confused with the twisted stitch technique mentioned below, which is also not to be confused with what happens when you mount your stitch on you needle backwards, resulting in 'twisted stitches' Confused yet?)

Diamond Cluster Waistcoat by Myra Mortlock

This pours into a geometric pattern that gives the appearance of being cabled or possibly a twisted stitch pattern (although a closer-but-too-blurry-to-tell inspection reveals that there's possibly something even more complex going on here involving long loops).

The diamond pattern continues down the second half of the vest before ending in two inches of ribbing to match the inch of ribbing at the arm openings.

Knit the look by downloading the free Diamond Cluster Waistcoat pattern here!

(Left: photo and pattern credit: Diamond Cluster Waistcoat by Myra Mortlock)

Miles' mom looks more than a little concerned for his sanity as she listens to him recount his latest supernatural encounter. She's wearing a top with a "feather and fan" design to the stitches, that looks easy to wear with a wide v-neck, half-length sleeves and some positive ease.

Knit (or crochet) the look:

Below, L to R: Golden Fern / photo & pattern credit: Valentina Randon (knit, free) ; Feather and Fan Top / photo & pattern credit: Rebecca Averill (crochet, free) ; Mama Christa's Feather & Fan Shell / photo & pattern credit StevenBe (knit)

This horror movie may look like it's got all of the run of the mill elements: mediums, ghosts, a paranormal hoax or three, but it truly stands out from the pack. Between the authenticity of excellent acting, the relatable earnestness of the characters, and the poignancy of the story (not to mention the spooks and the twists--yes, twists, plural). Don't overlook this one!

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