An amateur knitter has amazed stars of the smash hit Hobbit film with her incredible hand-weaved creations. Dwarves, dragons or wizards, nothing is too ambitious for Denise Salway, 50, who has knitted dozens of figures from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Staggeringly, Denise, from Penyfai, South Wales, does not work to any set patterns and comes up with the designs herself. “It’s all from my head but now I have started writing them down,” explains Denise. “I quite like a challenge. “Some of them take a long time, Smaug was over a month to do. Figures can take a day or a day and a half.”

Characters she has knitted include Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf and even Smaug the dragon – a piece of work that has won her fans from across the world. But her work extends beyond The Hobbit, she has also knitted former US President Abraham Lincoln and actress Audrey Hepburn.