Meet the stars who love to knit

Tracey Ullman

Now based in the US, comedian Tracey Ullman learnt to knit as a child, but didn't take it up as a hobby until she was filming in Baltimore, and a wool shop gave her the knitting bug.

'It was the window,' she says. 'It was like, edible - the colours and the textures of this wool - and it was bamboo baskets and needles and it was so different from when I was a child: all this awful acrylic post-war wool.'

After taking a refresher course in Baltimore Tracey was hooked, taking her craft to painful extremes. 'I knitted with some very tough wool,' she says. 'I was obsessed and I was making a bag and I couldn't stop. In the morning, I literally had blisters on my fingers.'

Undeterred, Tracey has since co-written a knitting book, 'Knit 2 Together' with Los Angeles yarn-store owner Mel Clark.

Want to read more? Here's our pick of knitting books