Addison Embroidery
at the
Vicarage

Stars for patchwork altar frontal for Ipsden Church

A rather depleted group of 4 patchworkers met for the fifth session but we hope to get more into the monthly swing of things from now on, now that holidays are over and thoughts are turning to log fires, pots of tea and woolly jumpers. Anyway 4 is better than none and as we assembled at least 2 stars each in about 2 hours, it wasn’t too bad – we are moving forward. I gave out another 10 or so stars to be tacked and pieced as people thought they might be able to do more hand sewing  in the lengthening evenings  – and with the hope that a few good TV programmes  will appear or boxed sets of missed series turn up. Failing being entertained by the television, I can only recommend gently training your husband to read out loud to you. (Start with short stories or P.G.Wodehouse and gradually increase the profundity of the literature until he can go on for an hour or more and “The Divine Comedy” can be placed on his knee and meet no objection. Well, no, we haven’t yet ascended to Dante’s heights but Dickens and Trollope are very good for long winter evenings – if you can cope with Lily Dale and her embodiment of saccharine femininity manacled as it usually was to unthinking patriarchy.) But I digress.

More fabrics for the altar frontal

We have now completed 120 stars in 44 different fabrics. 30 yellow background diamonds have also been finished and some of these have now been joined to the stars  – very exciting. There are more fabrics which I haven’t yet cut up and I still keep turning up scraps enough for single stars. Sometimes pieces from different stars fall in a heap together and it’s impossible to resist sewing those together. I like the idea of these random misfits catching your eye in a field of well matched order. A couple of my favourites appear below.

Random misfit star

We are making this frontal for the altar that isn’t an altar. I should explain. The oldest part of our church is a structure rather like a small barn to which a nave and chancel have been added (there are other structural imponderables such as what happened to the south aisle, the arches of which are clearly visible from the outside, but let’s not go there…). Anyway,  at the east end of  this barn-like space, someone, at sometime has added a table which has  been covered in a plain cream brocade cloth and has on it a simple wooden cross and this to all intents and purposes looks like an altar. But it has not been consecrated and is not dedicated to a saint. Typically, this place in a church would be the Lady Chapel but this is not possible here because our church , and hence also the high altar, is dedicated to St Mary the Virgin. This got me thinking. 

Random misfit star

About 2miles away, and visible from the vicarage, is Berin’s Wood where the C7th holy man  St Birinus is said to have built a simple chapel of which there are now no remains. He is reputed to have founded other local churches like St Peter and St Paul in Checkendon (3-4 miles away and the seat of our rector – if rectors have seats) and even one as far away as Reading but he is of course most associated with the abbey at Dorchester-on-Thames whose first bishop he became. When I sew I sit by a window and often look up and out onto Berin’s Hill and I realised that if not the altar, then certainly the altar frontal, has been made with thoughts of St Birinus in mind. The empty space in the church and the altar that isn’t an altar has gradually taken on a new significance as by associating it with St Birinus we are reminded of a part of the area’s early history so often forgotten. Formal consecration is unnecessary and what small church needs 2 altars anyway. But in Ipsden Church, the only building in the village going back as far as the C12th,  a little connection has been made back 400 years beyond that as we celebrate the memory of this man who came to our woods from Rome.(For more about the saint visit Dorchester Abbey’s page about him.) 

Ipsden Church: north ‘aisle’

The most perfect apples and plums picked in a little orchard by the Thames in North Stoke on 20 September 2013

What a bountiful year for fruit. Country people with fruit bushes and trees in their gardens are begging those of us not so fortunate to go round at any time and pick until the point of exhaustion. Failing that they leave baskets of fruit by the wayside for passers by to take for free. We were invited to pick the apples and fruit (shown above) in a little orchard by the Thames. Made greedy by their perfect condition and ridiculously pretty colour, we got completely carried away and ended up with far too much for puddings and pies for the Harvest Supper, especially as I knew a couple of apple crumbles and a blackberry and apple cobbler would be appearing.  (Incidentally, there are two full trays beneath those pictured above – one full of apples and one of plums.) An afternoon of stewing plums (in red wine and vanilla) and apples (in what remained of last year’s elderflower cordial) made the vicarage smell like a jam factory and left us with enough stewed fruit to have with Greek yoghurt on Sunday as well as pots galore for the freezer. 

Apple of unknown variety

Daughter no.3 appeared and was great help preparing 3 shepherd’s pies (1 giant sized and 2 large). I always like to have plenty of food for guests as you never know how many people will come back after the harvest festival. As parishioners brought another shepherd’s pie (lamb) and a cottage pie (beef) we had more than enough food – but better that way than having too little. We also made chocolate brownies swirled with blueberry mascapone and little plum frangipane tarts  and both these little things were good as we could give them to  people to take back to elderly or infirm relatives who couldn’t join us. I’m not very good remembering about wine so we were very grateful that one couple brought a box of six bottles, (along with sufficient glasses) and  the emeritus church warden brought another couple of bottles – more than enough – especially as many do have to drive home in the country where dark really means dark and country roads  are pitted with pot holes the size of small garden ponds. The vicarage made a definite gain on the alcohol front – I have offered it back but have been pressed to keep it. Jolly good.

Beautiful unblemished luscious apples

Aside from the cooking, Saturday was a rush with a wedding. We weren’t sure whether there were going to be any flowers in the church for the wedding as the couple didn’t have much money to spend. My husband mentioned this to those who were arranging flowers at his other church and so horrified were they at a wedding without flowers that they immediately picked up a couple of the harvest festival arrangements and took them over to the sister church. But we weren’t  the only ones in a rush. The harvest itself was not quite all gathered in. For a week or so we had been commenting on a bright red combine stationary in a far field as we looked out of the vicarage window. Visitors joked that it looked like an abandoned Wendy house or a mechanical circus elephant (the grain shoot being the trunk) ditched in the field. In fact, if we’d looked a little more observantly, we’d have noticed the field was only half harvested and that, putting 2 and 2 together, it was most likely that the combine hadn’t moved because it had broken down.  And this was no ordinary field but a prize winner, having grown the best barley in the area at the Henley Show a couple of years ago. Harvesting resumed the day of the harvest festival. The farmer finished harvesting, dashed home to get clean and put a suit on only to make a dramatic, though jovial and genial entry into the service half way through the second hymn. It all seemed very appropriate. 

Another pretty apple

Children at the village nursery had been growing their own vegetables and these took centre stage along with the bread also baked locally; the not so attractive ‘Readifood’ box in which food is collected for distribution in Reading was swopped for a basket. Flowers, a glorious combination of burnt orange, red and gold (the two arrangements taken to the wedding had returned) looked at their loveliest in the light of the setting sun. Local children enacted a song about putting food into a shopping trolley and our ad hoc choir did a reprise of the anthem from last year (Greene’s ‘Thou visitest the earth’ ) which was only possible for some of us as a result of repeated visits to YouTube and singing along with New College choir until family members begged us to stop. Just under 60 people came to the service and 40 of these came back to the vicarage for supper. I had meant to photograph the fruit, flowers, bread, pies and puddings, but when push came to shove, I completely forgot all about the camera. The vicarage began to empty for the first episode of the new series of Downton Abbey at 9 o’clock and the vicarage contingent were quite happy to suspend their critical faculties and sit in front of it ourselves.