Addison Embroidery
at the
Vicarage

The owl and the pussycat (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Time is a very slippery commodity. This time last year I looked forward to polishing off all those projects enumerated on an ever increasing list tucked away at the back of my notebooks. With the luxury of few commitments and the prospect of no travel, I could indulge in the sewing and knitting that took my fancy, sometimes setting half finished things to one side awaiting either the flash of light or the slow envisaging of that certain something which in design terms would snap everything else together into completion. Boring bits, like making embroideries up into cushions, I could put to one side until I was in the mood for getting the  sewing machine out and trailing cut off fabric and threads throughout the house. The joy of life taken slowly.

The pussycat (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Last week Covid restrictions began to ease. Time started to go faster. Like a thoroughbred out of the traps, Daughter No 1 and family immediately left London for a seaside holiday in Devon, aiming to call in on us on their way home. Having sent no Easter eggs I wanted to make the children something a bit different. Suddenly, I passionately wanted to make the children little animal cushions. Bunnies would have been the obvious choice for so many reasons (both children are bunny mad and bunnies are so very inscrutably Easter) but years ago I had cut out a picture from a magazine with a rather simple white cat shaped cushion sitting on a patchwork bed and I was hooked by the image (see photo below). An owl and a pussycat were firmly in my mind. A week was surely long enough, I thought, as I compressed the following seven days into a flurry of sketching, embroidering and stuffing wilfully independent minded feathers into animal shaped ticking cases. And the result is … back to the drawing board. Embroidery ok, cushion pads, quite wrong.

The Owl (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

And yet, why so? About 15 years ago, I had made similar cushions for my husband’s twin granddaughters and I remember those working out well. This was a few years before I started blogging and at that time I never thought of taking photographs of  things I made. Their father later did send me photos but I’ve no longer any clue where they might be.

Head of embroidered pussycat (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

The embroidery is very basic to minimal. Cushions made for children must expect to be used, abused and misused.  I’ve mostly used running stitches, with a bit of satin stitch, some long and short stitches and detached chain stitch. Covers were to be slip stitched together, as the last thing you want when you hug a cushion is to get the end of a zip or the jagged edge of a mother-of-pearl button in your eye. I expect to make running repairs whenever I visit and probably every now and then I’ll be the one giving the covers a wash. Having failed at my first attempt, I was wondering whether to sew the owl and pussycat together and make just one pillow, but their mum thought they would each really like to have their own little cushion, so this week I shall try again and see if I can be more successful.

Head of embroidered owl (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Mummy Bunny, my grandson’s favourite companion, now herself seven and a half years old, had an adventure of her own on holiday. Realisation that she was missing came after a day spent on and by the sea, having lunch in a pub garden and at the end of a walk home. Mummy, not to be confused with mummy bunny although the latter may well be the spiritual substitute for the former when absent, set off on a whirlwind mission to revisit all places they’d stopped at during the day, hoping firmly that mummy bunny wasn’t lying in the insalubrious loo they’d visited quickly and out of necessity. Hope draining rapidly, she got to the beach as the tide was coming in and there, 10 feet away from Atlantic rollers lay mummy bunny, having a late afternoon sunbathe, oblivious to the consternation she’d caused. Relief wipes away pent up worry, so mummy mummy snatched up mummy Bunny with joy in her heart. Later conversation turned to suggesting mummy Bunny’s owner either take better care of his beloved or  consider promoting one of the other bunny family to bunny in chief should the precious one go walkabout again. Eyes grew big and soulful at this suggestion while the adults around hoped fervently separation will never happen again. Mummy Bunny is so close to the appearance of a scrumpled rag as not to be separated by a sheet of the thinnest tissue paper, so any attempt at ‘distressing’ one of the other bunnies  to approach mummy Bunny in appearance would be doomed to certain failure. It should be here noted that mummy mummy, distressed as she was by the disappearance of her little Steiff mouse in orange trousers during a holiday in Pembrokeshire, did seem to get over it. (But … then again, I don’t think she’d had it from being born and she was at the time all of five and a half whereas her son is two years older. )

Magazine cutting showing inspirational embroidered pussycat cushion

Saturday we tuned in to Prince Philip’s funeral on the television and thought how wonderful a pared down funeral service was with no sermon or eulogy to interrupt silent contemplation of what will come to all of us. Good weather helps to take the edge off grief at a time when those that grieve need all the help there is and Windsor looked its loveliest in the spring sunshine.

On Sunday, the family arrived for lunch in the garden. The very smallest person announced it was cold but once the sun had worked its way round, she had no qualms about sitting on a quilt playing with the Sylvanian Families that live here and their narrow boat that spends most of the year sailing along on the hearth. After May the 17th we should be able to go and stay the night in London with the family. Will we be brave enough? I feel time is rushing along ever faster.

Regency Blossom by Ruth End ( a Cheltenham square in Spring)

Yes, it’s another outing for one of my very favourite knitting patterns. Why look for novelty when something ticks all the required boxes for a successful children’s jumper ? It’s not as if they’ve all been knitted for the same individual, which might be a bit sad, though I now I come to think of it I could live with that – each in a different colour and each with a different Fair Isle pattern! Umm tempting. Multiple buying of the same thing certainly works with shoes for me – I’ve never looked back since I discovered how well Skechers footwear fit and now I have boots and shoes for all weathers and (most) occasions, some of which I’ve been able to walk out of the shop wearing which had never happened before. But, back to the jumper; I know recipients’ mothers  love this pattern too and even ask for repeats – in fact daughter No 1 would like a repeat for the smallest person, who at 4 years old is well beyond the maximum size for the pattern. I shall have a go but it will take a furrowed brow and much pencil chewing during the scaling up.

Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino Bk 3 Polo shirt

However … after my sixth knitting of this jumper I came late to the realisation that the 4 balls the pattern required for size 18-24 months was not enough. At least 5 balls of yarn were needed and possibly 6. By the time I came to jumper number seven, I initially forgot this (having made no note on the pattern) but those 4 balls in the chosen colour suddenly looked too few and out of caution I thought it a good idea to go for contrasting collar, placket, cuffs and bottom ribbing. Before starting number 8, I had 4 whole balls and most of a fifth but I still needed to use another colour for the collar. The next thing I do will be to annotate the pattern accordingly…

Detail: Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino Bk 3 Polo shirt

It’s daughter No 1’s birthday today. My birthday phone call caught her in the car on the way to  (or from) the council tip offloading rubbish while at the same time giving her younger sister driving practice, which is one way to spend your birthday. She knows I shall be making her a botanical wall hanging –  which I haven’t yet even started let alone finished – but the older I get the more I realise  you really shouldn’t let the birthdays of those you’re close to go by without sending them something, possibly something small but it must certainly be something lovely. With all the current pandemic emphasis on washing hands, we’ve turned our backs on liquid soap in plastic bottles and gone back to old fashioned bars of the stuff. Pears soap is one of our favourites but, as I pass Cologne and Cotton several times a week, I seem to have accumulated several really pretty boxes of their finest soaps. Now I know why for they make the nicest of special but not inordinately expensive presents. Happily daughter No 1 loved them and even said “they were just what she wanted”. Now the pinkest of pink boxes sits on a shelf in the pinkest of pink loos and all those little hands can come to the dinner table clean and rose perfumed. (Although I’m not sure the children have mastered the art of using soap to wash their hands without simultaneously flooding the floor and the soap shooting out of their hands into the most inaccessible parts of the room.!)

Detail: Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino Bk 3 Polo shirt

The lovely weather of Easter has given way to duller and colder days. This year blossom seems to have been early, to have been  battered about at its peak and so has not lasted very long. Forty plus years ago when I went into hospital to have daughter No 1, there was little hint of spring anywhere. Four days later, I went home with new life not only in my arms but all around me. In those few days trees had erupted with billowy blossoms, garden plants unfurled bright petals and green was lime rather than khaki of later in the year. Such a nice time to be born. Ruth End has captured the season beautifully in the picture at the tope of this piece. It sits on my bookshelves through the year and reminds me that winter will pass. My husband having just had his second jab, reminds us that other things should get better too.

Swatch Fair Isle sample (Mary Jane Mucklestone: 200 Fair Isle Designs. Design 194, p.192)

Note to self: Knitting pattern:Fair Isle Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino Bk 3 Polo shirt. Fair Isle pattern : Mary Jane Mucklestone: 200 Fair Isle Designs. Design 194, p.192). Yarn Baby Cashmerino Navy (008)  and Kingfisher (072)