Not Knitting but Writing

oing, going, gone...




It has happened with my writing before, and looks like it's happening with my knitting recently - I've pretty much dropped it all. Unless an inch per week on the kilt hose counts?

Didn't think so, somehow.

I did start a baby blanket - no pattern whatsoever, straightforward knit every row - but have gotten only a few fingers in, or about three inches worth.

So what have I been up to? Mostly editing, lots of writing-related blogging. I entered a few contests here and there, and one of them was Jen's call for a scene showing a "disgusting/annoying moment that one of your characters experiences at the hands of his/her loved one". In lieu of a photo of knitting updates, then, here's the scene, from Out of the Water (please ignore the square brackets around the bits that haven't been written and the words that haven't been edited yet):

Baha's eyes blinked rapidly in his sleep. Fever dreams. He'd called out in his sleep only the night before, Ottoman words she did not understand, and she'd had to wake him, bathe his head, change the sheets, fan him – anything to try to cool his body. Doctor [X] had promised to obtain ice three days ago; perhaps today would be the day he finally did so.
She'd been washing his forehead again as he lay on the sofa. When Ayten came in bearing soup, she the cloth in the near empty bowl and swapped it for the tray.
"Do you think he might be able to finish it today?" the girl asked, looking up at her with large eyes.
"I'll try," she said, as if it was her fault her husband couldn't eat.
[Ayten leaves and she wakes him, i.e. tickles a sleeping dragon]
He put up a hand, blocking her as she tried to set the tray beside him.
"Do you want to hold it? It's hot," she cautioned.
"I don't want it at all. I'm weary of trying to force down food I can't taste." He turned his face away, into the cushion.
"Well, it'll help ease –"
"No, it won't." He struggled to sit up, tangled in the blankets. "There's nothing you can do, Rosa."
"At least I'm trying," she snapped, not moving to help him. "You never know what might do some good."
"There's nothing." He switched his glare from the blankets to her. "Don't you think if there was, I'd – I'm the one that's dying!"
"I'm the one that has to live without you!" Her hands shook. Hot soup scalded the tops of her feet. "Ow!"
She clattered the bowl onto the floor and stalked across the corridor to their room to change her stockings. There were no other clean ones; she hadn't yet [sent out] the week's laundry. She slammed the trunk lid shut and barged into Arcturus' room.
What a mess! She wasn't about to root through all that linen to try to sort clean from soiled.
Baha's and her room was just as [bad]; they didn't even fold up the bed anymore, as he usually spent most of the day in it. And still he refused to take any sort of treatment!
She dashed away tears with the back of her hand and tidied up the bedclothes.
What's the use? She thought, pounding the pillow into shape. Why should I keep trying if he won't? If he's going to –
She pitched face first into the pile, stifling her sobs in the folds of the sheets, smelling his [cinnamon] scent with every quaking breath.