Knitmare on Elm Street

This year, I’m embarking on what I hope to be a long-standing project to knit my own Halloween costumes. Starting, of course, with the iconic dream demon himself: Freddy Krueger.

With nine entries of wildly variable quality, including a 2010 remake and a 2005 crossover showdown with fellow ’80s horror icon Jason Voorhees, the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise remains one of the most recognizable horror series to this day. Even if you’re unfamiliar with the movies themselves, most people would likely at least recognize Freddy for his burnt visage, fedora, finger-knife glove, and red-and-green sweater.

My interest in horror came much later in life than most fans of the genre. I was sensitive and easily frightened as a child, but that fear slowly morphed into morbid curiosity as time went on. In particular, I became fascinated by the bizarre and twisted lore of horror films. Why was there a demon/ghost/murderer on the loose? How did they get there? How will the story end?

As an adult, part of the fun of horror movies for me is to peek behind the curtain and “see how the sausage gets made,” as the saying goes. Learning about the special effects and techniques they used on set to achieve the gore, or the symbolism the writers imbued, makes the movies more interesting to watch than for scares alone. For example, in the original Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven utilized rotating sets to achieve gravity-defying blood effects in some scenes.

While I haven’t seen every Nightmare film in its entirety, I have YouTube channels like Dead Meat (and their fabulous podcast of the same name) to help fill in the gaps and teach me all kinds of interesting things about horror movies, the film industry, and beyond.

When it came down to bringing the sweater to life, I first tried to find existing Krueger-esque patterns only to discover there were none to be found. Instead, I chose to modify an existing crewneck sweater pattern to fit the desired look.

Petite Knit’s Contrast Sweater, is a simple two-toned design that uses fingering and lace-weight yarns held together, which is equivalent to DK weight. I opted for the DK alternative, as Krueger isn’t exactly known for being fuzzy — and I was dead tired of the mohair-plus-fingering trend at this point.

It can be difficult to pinpoint the colours that make up the Freddy Krueger look. Depending on the interpretation, lighting, and era of the character, the colours can look anywhere from orange-red and sage green to more of a ruby red and forest green.

I decided my colour scheme would be of the moody variety. My heart was already set on Black Emerald, the most popular colourway dyed by Fireweed Fibre Company. It’s a gorgeous deep green, so dark it’s almost black — hence the name. For the red, I found my holy grail at Black Cat Custom Yarns in their shade Redpool, a vibrant bloody red that went perfectly with the richness of Black Emerald.

Studying several images, I concluded that 13 rows apiece would give me the ideal thickness for each stripe — and it’s a fittingly spooky number to boot. With it being DK and a nice mindless project, I was finished at record speed in just under two months.

Next came the other iconic accessories: the finger-knife-glove and brown fedora. The glove was easy enough to procure from the nearest Spirit Halloween; however, it took some searching to find the right hat.

The problem is that I have a gigantic melon of a head (thanks, Hydrocephaly), and I always struggle to find hats that fit. As I feared, the Freddy fedora at Spirit Halloween was far too small, so I went the fashion route instead and found a brown felt wide-brimmed hat at a local boutique. It’s not a fedora, but I’ll take what I can get, and it’s a versatile piece that I can wear outside the context of this costume. In my opinion, that’s one of the great things about the Freddy Krueger look. Excluding the finger knives, the constituent parts of the costume are easily reusable year-round.

The glove is really fun to wear though. Even with it being the cheapest mass-produced model, all plastic and polyester, I felt exceptionally badass. I spread my claws and tapped my fingers, hearing the satisfying “shink” of the parts moving into place (I can only imagine how much better it’d sound if it weren’t plastic!). So much so that by the end of the Halloween season, I broke one of the plastic straps that held my finger in place.

I think next time I break out the Freddy ensemble, I should spring for a wearable recreation from Etsy. I should have known that fellow horror and pop culture aficionados would be making gorgeous hyper-realistic Freddy gloves.

I made my full Freddy debut the weekend before Halloween at my friend’s house party. To complete the look I opted for some red eyeshadow and dark red lipstick — a sort of feminine take — as I didn’t want to irritate my skin with liquid latex and scar wax to make Freddy’s facial scars.

Thankfully, my costume was still recognizable without special effects makeup. In fact, on Halloween, I went grocery shopping in my outfit (without the glove). A clerk in the produce section of the store complimented me on my costume, then quoted the movie at me saying “THIS is god!” as he walked away.

It was an unexpected ego boost.

My last round of donning the bladed glove for the Halloween season was at Blackbird Knitting and Needlework’s knit night and costume contest. I took home the award for Scariest Costume and the grand prize of Best Dressed, which included a skein of the October Bird of the Month yarn (Raven), a matching raven stitch marker, and a gift card for the stationery store down the street.

In all, I am extremely happy with how my costume turned out, and am already brainstorming more potential costumes for the coming years.