The Happiest Place on Earth

Once again, I'm the delinquent blogger. However, this is partly because I haven't been knitting much at all. Another repeat on the cuff of my second Pomatomus sock, but that's about it. Miami doesn't exactly inspire desires for warm woolly socks. Also, there's been a lot to do, and being in a long-distance relationship means that even important things like knitting take a backseat for a while.

We took a short vacation to Disney World.

(By the way, the park is so empty because it was D's birthday and we had breakfast reservations at Cinderella's Castle before the park opened.)

It was a lot of fun, and absolutely exhausting. We managed to see everything that we wanted to in all four major parks in three days. (If you're interested, the highlights from our trip can be found in my flickr account. The thrill-seeker in me left a little unsatisfied, though. For this reason, we're making a brief jaunt to Busch Gardens in a few weeks to ride the coasters. Still, Disney can't be beat in terms of experience and ambiance. They were pretty competent in accommodating us in terms of dietary needs, which is another fairly recent development in our household. D and I have become completely vegan (which means we don't eat meat, milk, cheese, eggs, honey, etc. Anything animal derived). I'm really happy and positive about this change, and I rarely feel deprived. I'm certainly not losing any weight, either, though, as I've been cooking and baking a lot more. I made a killer Ginger-Walnut-Coconut-Carrot Cake from Vegan with a Vengeance last week and yummy french toast this evening:


Mmm. At this time, I'm still choosing to work with animal fibers, but I'm more conscious about the sources. I'm trying to buy from smaller companies who raise their own animals. I don't believe that shearing animals is inherently harmful, but as in any animal industry, there is the potential for abuse, especially as the company grows larger and those who sell the wool are farther and farther away from the realities of raising the animals. Also, once I use up my current (rather meager) stash, I'm going to try my hand at recycling yarn from thrift store sweaters.

The only downside to the whole summer so far is that I managed to get sunburned a couple days ago. Not at Disney, where I spent three 15 hour days outdoors, but when I spent less than two hours at the beach, mostly in the water. I was wearing waterproof sunblock, too, SPF 55. I just shouldn't have been out in the sun that time of day. I didn't even get just a little red, either. I have blisters on top of blisters, and I look like some sort of mutant. I'm tempted to take a picture of my charred and oozing shoulders as consequential proof that I won't be less pale if I "just get a little sun." I'm just meant to be translucent. However, D has informed me that if were to post such a picture, no one would read my blog ever again, so I'll spare you (It really is that bad, but, sadly, it's only the second worst sunburn I've ever had). Instead, I'll leave you with one of my favorite pictures from our vacation, the fireworks display at Epcot: