Addison Embroidery
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Jumper with Fair Isle bands (Pattern: Polo shirt Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino Bk 3) 6-9 months

Several days of some sort of bug bad enough to make me stay in bed has resulted in nothing produced on the embroidery front and not much more on the knitting front either. Fortunately I finished this jumper last week when I was in London and it has become a favourite. The pattern is from Debbie Bliss’s Baby Cashmerino Book 3 and the yarn is her Baby Cashmerino.

Jumper with Fair Isle bands (Pattern: Polo shirt Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino Bk 3) 6-9 months

I had ordered the yarn at Christmas thinking it was going to be more pink than red. As the colour wasn’t quite right for my granddaughter and I only had four balls anyway, I decided to make it for the friend in Ipsden with a 5 month baby.  The baby gets taken to fields and stables around South Oxfordshire as her mother gives riding lessons, so a snug jumper with a collar should be useful.

Detail Fair Isle bands

Hours of sitting beside the window have not gone completely to waste, however as I picked up knitting abandoned at Christmas when stumped by the very first line of pattern. Thanks to of YouTube, I have now mastered K1, yfwd, K1 ALL INTO ONE STITCH and those four lovely balls of silk and wool mix will no longer languish unused. A great relief as I don’t like to be defeated.

Fair Isle band samples

More Fair Isle band samples

Hand embroidered Z (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Embroidering a Z with zebra stripes was just too irresistible … and anyway the zebra is a spectacular animal worthy of celebration in its own right. Although still often raised as a subject of debate, the question whether a zebra is a black animal with white stripes or a white animal with black stripes was solved hypothetically as long ago as 1977 when an Edinburgh embyologist, J.B.L.Bard came down on the side of a black animal with white stripes. * Embryological research has since confirmed this; embryos begin dark and then lighter stripes appear. Stripes arise from melanocytes or specialised skin cells which transfer melanin, a skin darkening pigment, into the animal’s fur – those that contain melanin appear black, those without are white; the skin beneath the stripes is always dark.

Hand embroidered Z (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

Then this week, I read in The Times  (21 February) that research at Bristol University has shown that the adaptive function of those stripes is most likely to dazzle and bewilder nasty parasitic insects. It seem the stripes play havoc with the horseflies ability to land. Many hover around the animal, some car crash straight into it but very few achieve a successful landing. The theory was tested out by horses dressed in zebra coats where the result was notable for the strength of the effect. In today’s Times a letter from Suzanne Chipperfield (of the circus family) who has worked with both horses and zebras confirms that she had too noticed her horses and ponies attracted many flies while the zebras didn’t; she will now be providing striped rugs for her horses.

Sketches of various Zs found online

Interestingly, the Royal Navy was keen on painting their boats with dazzle patterns during WWI which they thought made their ships a more difficult target. Speed, direction of travel and distance became more difficult for the enemy to judge when the ship was broken up visually, so fewer missiles hit the target. Not so different from those pesky mosquitoes or tsetse flies then! See Edward Wadsworth’s engravings of dazzle ships.

Sketches of various Zs found online

(*Stephen Jay Gould’s splendid book of essays ‘Hens’ Teeth and Horses’ Toes” 1983; capter 29 How the Zebra Gets itsStripes)