Knitted characters mysteriously appear in town

Yarn bombs of fictional characters including Postman Pat have appeared around Pickering

An array of knitted fictional characters, including Postman Pat and Paddington Bear, have mysteriously appeared around a town in North Yorkshire.

The woollen objects have popped up this week on post boxes, lamp posts and even peering out of shop windows around Pickering.

Residents in the market town spent hours concocting their creations and then displayed them in the middle of the night so they would be spotted by shoppers in the morning.

One knitter, who wanted to remain anonymous, said she was part of a secretive crafting group who loved to share their designs.

"The ladies who do the crafting, they just like to craft, they don’t want all the razzmatazz with it and are not showing off, they just love to craft and share it," she said.

"We’ve got a very secretive WhatsApp group, but I’ve never really seen them and we’ve never met.

"We just know their names but don’t know what they look like."

Some of the yarn bombers were able to gain access to local shops and planted their knitted objects there, with one Magic Roundabout scene left in one of the town's bookshops.

A knitted afternoon tea set also popped up in Ivy's Tea Rooms

Pickering Book Tree's owner Andrew Bundy said: "I reckon it secretly appeared overnight one night as there it was next morning.

"It just looked wonderful and it has attracted a lot of people who come along and take pictures and recognise the names, of course.

"It has just been a real colourful addition to the town this summer."

In the nearby Ivy's Tea Rooms, a woolly afternoon tea set has also been displayed in the window.

Ashton Gibson-Fuller, who works at the tea room, said: "It brings something to the town that nowhere else has, you can’t go to Scarborough and see knitting on post boxes – it is different."

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