Pottering about

We're right in the middle of those weird few days between Christmas and New Year. It's not a public holiday, but half the country seems to have shut up shop. There is an air of not-working everywhere.

I have work to do. I need to write an overview of my thesis - a paragraph for each chapter which succinctly states what I will be arguing. It's a short enough document, but tricky in its brevity. Pottering about while the overview mulls through the back of my mind seems to be the way to go. This sort of work is an iterative process which requires a lot of mental distance, so it's nice to have some relatively quiet time to space my thoughts out.

Over the last few days I've entertained myself filling in YouGov surveys, (re)reading Phillip Pullman novels and watching bad kid's movies (the latter two do sort of count as research for me). I gave my mother a sock-knitting lesson, did a pile of hand-washing, played with a pattern write-up, sewed some buttons, visited the winter sales, hoovered the hall and scrubbed the bath, every now and again returning to my thesis overview. Having spent the last couple of hours typing up my latest set of notes, I think a break to blog a so-far-secret Christmas FO is in order.

Pattern: Reverse-Bloom Washcloth (free!).
Yarn: Euroflax Linen sportweight, leftover from my bottoms-up top. I managed three washcloths with a bit over half a ball.
Needles: 2.5mm circular (smaller lily), 3.25mm (larger two).
Notes: It's a reasonably quick project, though not as quick as you might think. I wasn't sure if I had enough yarn for a third, so I fudged the design slightly to make it smaller - it's very easily adaptable. An excellent stash-buster and, finished-off with a tiny bar of violet-scented soap, made fantastic stocking-fillers.