Sittingbourne’s “knitting man” is attempting to spin his way into the Guinness Book of World Records.

Ted Hanniford from Cavell Way has spent more than five years creating a woollen mammoth yarn which is 18.3 miles long.

The 73-year-old produced the yarn using the French knitting technique, involving a spool
to produce a narrow tube of fabric.

Ted, a retired security guard, and his wife Rita, 66, invited Mayor of Swale, Cllr Sue Gent, to verify the length of his homespun monster.

The Hannifords have calculated the multicoloured, spaghetti-style knitting, which is stored in two 6ft boxes at their home, is long enough to travel to the top of Mount Everest and back.

Ted hopes the Mayor’s official endorsement will enable him to reclaim the record he said he originally set in 1993 for
the world’s longest piece of knitting.

Back then, his effort was a mere three and a half miles long, but he claimed it was usurped two years later by an Australian man who spun out an extra two miles.

Ted, a grandad-of-12, reckons he’s now at least “three or four miles” ahead of his Antipodean rival who’s become a long-distance friend as the pair keep tabs on each other’s progress.

“He does a lot of golfing holidays so he doesn’t have as much time to knit,” Ted said. “I’ll be in touch with him again as soon as the record’s confirmed.”

Ted said he took up his handmade hobby 25 years ago when he complained to his knit-mad wife about the amount of wool she was wasting. "She said to me, ‘Why don’t you do some French knitting?’

“I told her, ‘Men don’t knit’, but she started me off on it and I’ve been going ever since.”

Ted said he takes up the yarn a couple of hours a day “depending on the weather”, which if sunny, will see him down spools and tend the garden.

According to his wife, Ted’s wool-based odyssey will continue for a while at least. Rita said: “He keeps saying he’s going to pack up, but he never does.

“Although he has said he might give it up when the length reaches 20 miles. By then he’ll have enough knitting to go back up Everest again.”