KNITTING has traditionally been an indoor pursuit but now scores of women have covered lampposts, trees and even buses with colourful swathes of wool. The practice, known as ‘yarnbombing’, originated in America but has now reached Britain. Just like graffiti artists, the knitters often pick a target and transform it during the night. 
An artist in Manchester has knitted cosies for trees and covered an entire garden shed. Sarah Hardacre, from Salford, said: “It is about the community taking pride in their surroundings and making it look nice and colourful.” Yarnbombing started when Magda Sayeg, from Texas, covered a door handle and a traffic sign outside her clothes shop. Hundreds of people stopped to take photographs and she soon moved on to covering a single decker bus. Ms. Sayeg said: “Luckily I had a whole team to help me with the bus but it took a week to do. “We used large chunky needles and dozens of balls of yarn to fully cover the whole vehicle. “Using knitting as a form of graffiti is a crazy phenomenon and there is no other hobby like it.”