"The ball of wool miaowed, most piteously"

While I was visiting my parents I bought a couple of kids' books in a second-hand bookshop. I bought Ronnie and the Great Knitted Robbery by John Antrobus (illustrated by Rowan Barnes-Murphy) mostly because of the title. I've been reading it to the kids and it's wonderfully surreal. Ronnie is a boy who is thrown into an oven by a witch who lives on the 12th floor of a high-rise.  Things get weirder from there, with the characters knitting themselves from scene to scene with magic knitting needles. There is a knitted cup of coffee and a knitted kitten. The kitten gets unravelled at one point and Queen Victoria finds herself saddled with a mewing ball of wool who wants milk:

I can't help but feel that I missed out on this book as a kid. I'm of the right vintage, but I never read any of John Antrobus' books though I remember the title Help, I'm A Prisoner In a Toothaste Factory - well, who could forget that?