really, i'm not obsessed.

i'm sort of in limbo on sock wars - my target hasn't yet received her socks, so there are no socks yet on their way for me to work on;  my third would-be assassin is now dead, so the socks destined to kill me could be anywhere between the three of them...so i have to find other ways to keep myself occupied.  since i have a pile of things in progress, i am of course consumed with the thought of socks.  i did my sock-wars ones on dpns, but i really really like doing two at a time, and i have a couple more balls of the tofutsies, so saturday i cruised by one of the local yarn stores and bought a size 1.5 (2.50 mm) addy turbo circular (i had to go to that size to get gauge on the tofutsies).  however, i couldn't for the life of me find the inside end of either ball of tofutsies (aren't those blasted things supposed to be center pull?  how can you pull from the center if you can't find the end???).  however, i _could_ find both ends on a ball of cotton-blend sock yarn, but i didn't want to do the same pattern again, and it's slightly thicker yarn so it would probably be too large for the detonator (sock wars iii) pattern anyway...so i came up with another stitch that i thought would work.  it does look really pretty:

but the yarn doesn't have much 'spring', and neither does this pattern, so i'm not sure how well they will work as socks.  SO...these are now on waste yarn, because as i was laying in bed this morning i had a brainstorm (yes, a total brainstorm, i'm sticking to my story), to wit:
1)  there has been considerable discussion on the sock wars forum on whether the pattern is an 8-stitch or 9-stitch repeat.  to me, it was obviously a 9-stitch, but from all the talk, i'm seeing how people read it as an 8-stitch...and now i'm curious about how different they might look.  some of the pictures on ravelry make the pattern look more like a chevron, whereas mine was more rounded (which, frankly, i thought was more in fitting with her description of the inspiration for the pattern- the lines around a comic-book 'pow').
2)  there was also some discussion on the increase stitch;  again, some people used a more open increase, even a yo...and i'm interested to see how that little bit of laciness might look. 
3)  while i can't find the inside end of either ball, i do have two balls - so i can knit two different socks at once!  with different patterns, so i can compare how they look!.

it's totally going to work.  i believe.

in the meantime, however, i have forced myself to work on my car-seat cover.  it occurred to me, after all the sock discussions, that i could do a sort of heel-turning short-row dealy to handle the corners of the seat (as with most newer cars, it's shaped to sort of wrap around you).  finished that bit last night, took it out this morning to see how it fit - and it fits great!  so now i just have to finish the front bit - maybe 3 more inches...so we will see whether i get back to my brilliant idea.  then again...i volunteered as a poll worker for the jun 3 primary, and it will probably be rather quiet...so i do need to have some knitting with me.


....and the sun just came out, and i should really do a bit more work in the garden...can't i retire now, and go back to work when i'm old and tired and have all my projects done?

Can I blog during a moment of silence?

I'm not surprised that Bush should be the first president to call for a moment of silence on Memorial Day.  Anything to keep us from talking about the ways he's screwed over the military, while proclaiming his great patriotism.  Starting with his chicken-hawk stance in Vietnam, when he war-mongered around Yale, secure in the knowledge that he himself would never have to put his life on the line, through his war-by-choice in Iraq, where he sent the military off short of everything from armor to troops (not failing to mention the severe shortage of leadership) - and ending with the greeting they get on the home front, where vets unlucky enough to get PTSD risk being retroactively rejected from the service, those who do get to claim medical care from the VA have to pay higher rates, and the ones healthy and ambitious enough to hope to use their GI benefits to go to college have to manage on the pittance that is left in that program.  Bush's own actions this Memorial Day include threatening a veto of a bill that would return those benefits to something resembling the ones originally promised to American veterans.  But hey - he gave the Unknown Soldier a wreath, right?  Of course, we paid for it.

It infuriates me that Bush and his supporters can trumpet themselves as the true patriots on the basis of their empty words and gestures, and the American people give them a pass on their actual actions - actions that belie those high-sounding words.

My father, a WWII vet, died in a VA hospital.  His life rather fell apart in its last few years, and I was immensely grateful that the VA was there, to do what it could for him.  At that time, it never occurred to me (or probably anyone) that someone could be suffering from PTSD so many years after the war, but now I have to wonder.  He never spoke, to me at least, of his service...of course, in my youthful selfishness, I never thought to ask.  I know he considered his time in the service important;  I doubt he would have had the career he had if he didn't take pride in it.  But he never had any war stories, so I don't even know how much war he saw, or what he thought about it.  I know he wasn't wounded, and I know he finished college and went to graduate school on the GI Bill, and I know the VA was there for him when he needed it.  I wonder how many veterans of Bush's war will be able to say that.  I hope that's one of the many things we will be able to change, starting next year.