Van Buren Point, 2012

The Hubster and I didn’t spend nearly as much time as we would have liked at the Lake this summer, something we hope will change in 2013. But since I know I have at least one reader (Hi, SJ!) who enjoys my sunset photos, I figured I’d post a “highlights” from the year.

Our first trip was for July 4th. We went up early in order to attend a memorial dinner for a dear friend who passed away in February that was held on Monday the 2nd. The following night, we seem to have had a nice sunset.

We didn’t get up again in July, but attendance at our family’s Van Buren Point night party has always been mandatory (for us). The night before the August 4th party had another good sunset. It was too damn hot for it to be great, but this was my favorite shot from that particular evening.


I did make a quick trip up in late August, the week after my mom died. But I was only there for one night, and missed sunset because I was at dinner with wonderful family friends. The afterglow hinted that the sunset had been fantastic, but spending time with important people was far more important than getting my camera for sunset pictures.

A brief stay over Labor Day weekend yielded possibly the best sunset of the summer to my camera lens that Sunday night


And, finally, we never managed to catch a sunset during last week’s vacation, but our final morning dawned clear and cold. I got a few great shots just minutes before we packed up and headed back to the ‘Burgh. If it had been 20 degrees warmer, it would have been a perfect beach day.


Here’s hoping for many more sunsets in 2013.

Sunset: 13 September 2011

Last night of the year at VBP. I didn't think we were going to have a sunset at all, but we got a little bit of color.






And a few seconds later, the sun disappeared behind a cloud. Then I climbed in my car and came back to Pittsburgh. Until we meet again in 2012...

Sunset: 12 September 2011

Sunset: 24 August 2011

I took a walk earlier today and the lake was so high that there was very little glass. Here's my haul for the last couple days:


Sunset was pretty mild tonight, but again. The lake was very high and there was hardly any beach today. Sunset!




And then I nearly stepped on this guy on my way back up to the house.


And that's it for vacation 2011, possibly for the year. I may try to scoot up here once more come September, but this could be it. Hope you've enjoyed this year's sunset pictures!

Sunset: 23 August 2011

Sunset: 22 August 2011

An almost-chilly day here at VBP, but a pretty good sunset to top it off ...

Sunset: 21 August 2011

A long day of epic storms ended with a pretty decent sunset. Happy start to vacation!

It’s Still Wednesday …

Since the cottage was going to be empty for more than a few days between my departure today and when the next human arrives, I had lots of little stuff to take care of today and ran out of time to blog. But I have authentic “as I started this Wednesday” footage of my knitting, so here you go.

My Manos möbius is excruciatingly close to finished. I’d say 60-65% of the attached I-cord bind-off is finished. But take a look at the bottom edge of the möbius in this picture:


Yeah. I’m out of yarn. Thankfully, the generous and talented CelticQueen has some of this very same yarn and is going to let me mooch what I need. Thanks, birthday girl! (her b-day is Thursday)

In other news, the Musique socks are getting some knitting time


Sock #2 is nearly to the point where I’ll begin arch increases. Yay!

I did manage to wedge a 90-minute walk into my day, and once again the pickings were pretty darn good. As cruddy as the weather was this week, it’s tempting to stay because there was so much good glass to find on the beach. Even with the Lake pretty high today, I still got some really good stuff


Some of the cooler pieces, quarter for scale

Yes, that's a badly-focused neck of a bottle. Probably a Coke bottle. Cool!

So that’s it for 2010 at Van Buren Point. Here’s hoping I get more time up there next year.

Fake-ation For the Win!

It’s been a good final stay at the Lake for 2010.



As you know, I got here Sunday night shortly after sunset.

On Monday, it rained for a good chunk of the day, and it was relatively cold out. I took a walk anyway.

I think it was “Top Gun” where Tom Cruise described a “target-rich environment,” just before she lost that lovin’ feelin’. That has pretty much described both of my walks on this trip as it pertains to beach glass.


Some of the highlights:




And a marble!


I woke up to some pretty heavy rain this morning, but it cleared up a bit this morning, and I zipped down to the beach for a few minutes. I finally remembered to take a couple pictures of the where I walk when I’m up here. I walk to Lake Erie State Park, which is where the tiny green patch and white dot are in the following photo


Can’t see it? I don’t know why not. But I’ll help you out a bit


Yeah. It takes me between 60-90 minutes to get there and about the same to get back. I’m guessing it’s about three miles one-way.

We had rain for good chunks of the morning, but things finished up around lunchtime. I went out and walked the whole way to the park and back. The weather was getting crazy on the walk back. Major wind and the Lake was getting much higher (rougher) as I walked. No matter. I still got an impressive amount of glass today.


The plan tomorrow is to wake up, take a walk then head down for Hurricane Knitters. Here’s hoping for good weather in the A of M.

So Far, So Good

As planned, I left for the Lake shortly after the Steelers victory in Tampa Bay this afternoon. I didn’t make it in time for the “official” sunset, but as I was bringing stuff into the house from the car and getting settled, there were some great colors going on from the “afterglow” of the sunset.

Oh, and I remembered ALL of my power cord. Like I said. Progress.

Enjoy the photos.




And, about 10-15 minutes later …






As I was snapping away from a neighbor’s seawall, I kept noticing the beautiful reflection in the picture window. My shutter had to be open for so long, it was difficult to capture the image. This was the best I got.


I hate how early sunset is now (thank you, autumnal equinox!) but all in all it’s OK. Now I’m looking forward to a nice relaxing 2.5 days up here, finishing with Hurricane Knitters down in Pittsburgh on Wednesday night. Then it’s back to reality. Can’t wait for that, either!

Best Laid Plans …

Hi there!

I had all kinds of stuff I was going to share with you last week. Beach glass, a finished project, a great rainy day at the Lake, sunsets …


But first this happened


I left half of the power cord for my laptop right there, plugged in next to the loom. Oops.

My mom’s laptop was available for some basic internet usage while I was there Monday AM-Wednesday early afternoon, but any photo editing or downloading just wasn’t going to happen. I figured I’d catch up on Wednesday evening when I got home from the Lake.

Yeah.

I got home shortly after sunset. And this had happened


Wide view:


That’s parallel to our back fence, over the hill in our gully. We’ve called for estimates to get it cleaned up. Fortunately, if it falls between now and then, the worst thing it could take out is the actual fence. No biggie.

But the bigger deal was this


Don’t see the problem? How ‘bout this view of the same tree


Yeah, those are our power lines (and the power lines for Sydney's humans). Just below the large branch that's horizontal to the ground.

Our power was out when I got home on Wednesday at 7 p.m. (storm had gone through around 4:30 p.m.). We were still dark on Friday afternoon when the power company made it to our neighborhood and started chipping away at our problems. The second tree I showed you was taken care of by these guys


And we had power by around 8:45 p.m. on Friday night. Hooray!

We were fortunate that we had no actual property damage. Just about 52 hours in the dark. We lost the full contents of the fridge and it got a little toasty in the house, but otherwise no actual complaints. As I said to KnitN’at on Friday, the annoyance level was around 12, but the actual danger/damage level was zero. We were pretty fortunate, all things considered.

Meanwhile, we moved some furniture around and are test-driving a different room as our TV room. So far, so good!

I’m headed back up to the Lake Sunday evening. My last trip of the year.

I promise to take all of my power cord this time. You’re welcome.

Labor Day

Hi there! Hubster and I headed up to the Lake for 2/3 of the long weekend. Since I worked Saturday. It was his last trip up for the year, although I hope to go up a couple more times before the end of the month.

Anyhoo, the wind was amazing when we got up there on Saturday night. We arrived at the house about half an hour before the power went out, but that wasn’t such a big deal. It’s amazing how quickly my body manages to “power down” after arriving at VBP.

Sunday was an inside-the-house day because the wind was still pretty high. I did spend a few hours in my hammock chair, which was do-able because it hangs from a relatively wind-protected portion of the house.

No beach walk on Sunday because, well, there was no beach. The lake was entirely too high because of the weather.

We actually had a pretty good sunset that evening, which was a bonus. I took a completely excessive number of photos. Here are the highlights.








You can't actually tell in the above photo, but it was really obvious that all of that sand had been underwater extremely recently.



Otherwise, I spent the weekend furiously knitting a pair of Fuzzy Feet for the Hubster. Since Monday was the last time the felting-friendly washing machine and his ginormous ski feet were going to be in the same place in the same time. I got ‘em done and you’ll see them here shortly.

There was a walk with some good beach glass on Monday, but I totally forgot to take pictures, so I’ll try to include those with my WiP Wednesday stuff tomorrow. Hope all of you had an enjoyable long weekend as well!