Addison Embroidery
at the
Vicarage

Ipsden altar frontal: the mallow (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

This week I’ve been pushing multitasking to the limit (well, for me, anyway) and brain pathways are getting just as tangled as the threads from the two different jerseys I’m knitting and the monogrammed cushion I’m embroidering. Mornings, while the young master is at nursery are taken up with embroidery (light so much better) and working out Fair Isle designs for the bottom of a new jumper for the small person (ditto the bit about light and add to it the benefits of a clear morning head). During the day, I’ve managed to get on with a bit of  straightforward knitting for a little long sleeved woollen polo shirt while overseeing Duplo construction, but in general this becomes evening work –  remarkably untaxing and delightfully soothing. I never got into knitting while my own children were little and it’s only now that I realise what I missed.  After a day of mixed success with the potty training, it’s extraordinary how advancing a few inches of knitting can end the day on a high!

Ipsden altar frontal: the mallow (hand embroidered by Mary Addison)

But with lots of projects on the go, I’m glad that I still have a few embroidered flowers for the altar frontal to show and once again this one is a flower that reminds me of the Oxfordshire countryside we left last summer – a time when the mallow was at its most prolific, deep pink flowers and a bushy straggle of haphazard leaves lining every dusty lane, well trodden footpath and patch of waste ground. So much about its untidy bearing suggests ‘weed’ yet its flowers are as pretty and profuse as any a garden grown lavatera. (And on this I’m confused. The lavatera, Lavatera olbia, is also known as the tree mallow, yet the mallow’s Latin name is Malva sylvestris; both have very similar flowers and colouring, yet seemingly no consanguinity – convergent evolution? . More research needed!). The mallow is instead closely related to the splendid statuesque hollyhock and the exotic hibiscus, whose flowers are indeed alike but quite different from the mallow! Interestingly, the mallow is also related to the cotton plant, but I can make no comment on this as cotton isn’t grown in England.

Hollyhocks (closely related to mallow) seen on a street corner in Hoi An, Vietnam to celebrate Vietnamese new year

Though regarded as a weed now, in the past mallow was valued as both food and medicine. Pliny recommended a daily dose of mallow sap diluted in water to ward away aches and pains, while Cicero thought eating young mallow shoots gave him indigestion. Martial found it a useful hangover cure for the morning after an orgy. Some folk remedies suggest application of the leaves to draw out insect stings or a paste of its gummy sap as a poultice for skin infections. The fruit, a round of seeds looking like a cottage loaf sliced into segments, is known as ‘cheese’, has a indistinct, slightly nutty taste, was often picked and nibbled by children and gave rise to the plant’s folk names, like ‘cheese flower’, ‘pick-cheeses’ (Norfolk), ‘Billy buttons’ or ‘pancake plant’. So far have we as a nation moved from our rural roots, that I’m not sure any children today, in this modern risk averse world would dream of putting one of these little ‘cheeses’ into their mouths.

Debbie Bliss Fair Isle cardigan

Since I made my first jumper embellished with a little bit of Fair Isle I’ve been desperate to try kitting one of those glorious garments with a lavishly patterned yoke. Finding a Debbie Bliss knitting pattern for a new born baby was just the thing. A nice little yoke meant I could have a go without investing too much time, wool or energy should it all prove to be a challenge too far. Once I got going I really enjoyed the rhythm, and I was often found sitting over my needles chanting “red,red, yellow, yellow yellow, red, red” oblivious of those around me.

Debbie Bliss Fair Isle cardigan: after blocking

It seemed to go well and a nice horseshoe of yoke at the end of it all looked promising. I then knitted the front bands (for the buttons and with the buttonholes) – just as the knitting pattern said – picking up wool for some 56 stitches. Disappointingly, the resulting bands looked much too puckered and stretched, so I undid them and re-knitted them but this time, in the spirit of nothing ventured, nothing gained, I picked up over 80 stitches! This looked so much better and, having increased the buttons from 5 to 8 the band looks less gappy. By the time I got this far, wouldn’t you know it, I had run out of wool so I had to experiment with different colours. Curiously in the end I settled on a slightly different grey which would have looked terrible if I’d had to use it anywhere else in the main body of the knitting but which for the front bands and in rib look surprisingly perfect. Very satisfying when odd bits of a random ball of wool are so useful.

Debbie Bliss Fair Isle cardigan : detail of yole

Blocking was necessary. The slope of the yoke over the shoulders looked much too steep and even after blocking it still doesn’t look quite right. My tension is not usually a problem but perhaps I need to make sure the threads looping across the back of the pattern are just a bit looser. The cardigan in the pattern book certainly does look looser than mine. How glad am I that I began with such a small garment. I’d like to repeat the pattern in other colours but I’m just not sure whether even a looser tension would make a difference. I think a trip to Loop is called for so they can give me advice on the cardigan I’ve just finished and perhaps recommend another pattern to try. Any advice from any readers would also be appreciated.

Debbie Bliss Fair Isle cardigan as it appears in the pattern book

Meanwhile I’m working on a simple band of Fair Isle around the bottom of a jumper for the three-year-old – infinitely relieved that I don’t have to think about such things as tension around curves.