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Knitting-Related Guinness World Records

I had to share some of the Guinness World Records connected with knitting.  It is amazing to me the type of skill, stamina and unique characteristics these record holders have in common.

How about trying to knit with these SPNs??
Ingrid Wagner and her large needles and knitted swatch
  • The largest knitting needles measured 3.5 m (11 ft 5.8 in) long and had a diameter of 8 cm (3.15 in). Ingrid Wagner, a rug and art creation artist, from the UK used the needles to knit a tension square of ten stitches by ten rows at the Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, on March, 10 2008.  (And I complained about getting certain SPNs stuck in my clothes.)  See how this swatch was done with merely 5 people managing the needles.  And what about the yarn?  It is truly ex-bulky.  It looks like they're knitting in a warehouse, but with a wingspan of almost 24 feet or 7 m, you'd need all that space. 


  • Or how about the longest piece of finger knitting that measured 4,321.4 m (14,177 ft 9 in or well over 2.5 miles) completed by Niklas Bernhard (Germany) on June 10, 2004. (Don't know what finger knitting is, click on the hyperlink.  You need to watch just the first minute to understand how it is done.)  The finger knitted chain took more than eight years to complete and was wound into a ball weighing 5.62 kg (12 lb 6 oz).   That had to be almost his entire life! 
    Niklas' world record project
  •  The most people knitting simultaneously in a single location is 1,805 in an event in Kaohsiung City, Chinese Taipei, on December 3, 2011.  The event took place at the Tsaogong River Festival, where scarves were knit for low income families, disadvantaged minorities and the elderly in the community.  (I wonder if we (note it isn't "I") could pull off a bigger event in the Lower Mainland?)

You could find these neon green scarves in the dark.

  • Finally from February 2005, Edward Peter Hannaford (UK) holds the world record for the longest French knitting at 21.75 km (13.51 miles).  Really, that is a big ball of French knitting.  He began working on this project in 1989.  That's 16 years of work in one mighty long strand.  I'm sure he didn't work on this project in public; toting it around would have been painful.

Edward Peter Hannaford all wound up.

          Generally French knitting is done by kids using one of these spool-like contraptions:



There you go, a brief Guinness World Records snapshot in knitting.  And you thought I was weird about knitting; I don't hold a candle to this work.
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