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.

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.

Back in the ‘Burgh

We’re home from vacation. Things got a little busy the last few days, so I’ll get you all caught up from the end of our vacation.

The Lake was pretty high on Thursday, so the walk was shorter and there wasn’t a whole lot of beach glass. But that’s OK! Because it means that there WILL be lots of glass the following day!


Friday proved that theory true. Walked to the State Park again and got a ton of glass!


And a close-up of some of the cooler pieces from that day’s walk, including a chunk of Coke bottle and most of the bottom of a bottle.


That night, we had the first good sunset of the entire trip. Hooray! Here’s a mosaic of some of the ridiculous number of photos I took that night. Click through to Flickr to embiggen!

1. 0806sunsetA.jpg, 2. 0806sunsetB.jpg, 3. 0806sunsetC.jpg, 4. 0806sunsetD.jpg, 5. 0806sunsetE.jpg, 6. 0806sunsetF.jpg, 7. 0806sunsetG.jpg, 8. 0806sunsetH.jpg, 9. 0806sunsetI.jpg

The Lake was actually pretty high again during Friday’s sunset, so there was another bonanza on the beach on Saturday morning. Yay!


The big party was Saturday night and I was busy chatting when it was time for sunset, but I grabbed my camera in time for a couple shots as the sun peeked through the clouds one last time.


This won't be my last trip this summer, but I don't know when I'm going back up. We shall see!

Many Photos, Few Words

It’s late and I have a packed day tomorrow, so I’ll make this as quick as I can so I can go hit the hay.

Woke up this morning and took a walk. Same distance covered in half an hour less than normal. I only picked up the “really good” pieces of glass today, one in particular kind of blew me away. Whole haul:



As (I hope) you can see, there’s one gigantic piece of glass there next to the battery. But you can’t really tell what’s going on with that piece until you see it up close a little better



That blue piece is larger than normal and I got a few more good ones, but yeah. Let’s talk about that monster just above the battery.



It just dwarfs the battery



Bigger in every way. I was just shocked when I saw that piece on the beach.

I snapped a few WiP Wednesday photos



I cranked on the sister in law socks on Saturday. Almost done with Sock #1!

And I’m still Mondo-ing along



I’m on my fourth ball of yarn and it’s a pretty simple knit at this point.

Snapped a few final photos of the Lake and I was out of there.





So that’s it. I have a gazillion things on my to-do list for Thursday, so I’d best hit the sack.

Sayonara

My last full day at the Lake in 2009 is complete. Well, it’s a little past complete. I’m up past my (self-imposed) bedtime and have a very full day that will start early (for me) Wednesday morning.

So how did I spend my final day in paradise?

Woke up at a semi-reasonable hour. Took a two-hour walk on the beach. Located a pretty impressive quantity of glass:



It has been the easiest thing in the world to walk out the door for a two-hour walk when I know I can pick up beach glass over those 5,000+ steps (I wore my pedometer today). Here’s hoping I can keep up a somewhat similar quantity of exercise when I get back to Pittsburgh. Working out daily is going to be my job. Right? Right!

After returning from my walk, I scrounged a bit of lunch, started some laundry and went to the beach for nearly two hours to read trashy novels and listen to the waves. We had a cold-and-dark snap this afternoon, then I took a mini-walk on the beach at sunset.



Wasn’t much of a sunset …



That first shot (above) is about 20-25 minutes before the sun actually set, but was the closest thing to a sunset that we had this evening.



And I was reminded that I never made it out on the kayaks this summer. Then again, I wasn’t here all that much.



Once it started getting too dark to be on the beach, I ambled on down the beach to visit my dear friends the Blackburns for the final time this summer. I spent about an hour with them before heading home to putter around and mentally prepare to scram tomorrow following my morning beach walk.

I hope I haven’t bored all of you to tears with my pictures of glass and sunsets. We’ll get back to the regular blog fodder shortly.

Love and Hate

I have a day and a half left at the Lake for 2009. I was in Pittsburgh on Saturday and came back up here that night.

Sunday was a perfect beach glass day.



Notice I’ve switched my “for scale” object in the photos. That’s because of the one piece of glass just to the right of my phone. It is the largest piece of beach glass I’ve ever seen, by far. Let’s have a closer look…



Yeah, the other pieces closest to my phone aren’t too shabby either. The one directly above is probably close to an inch thick. Oh! And I also found my first-ever marble that same day. See?



Today was another good day. Here’s my haul from my “primary” walk, around lunchtime today:



Not too shabby, I’d say! The half-round just to the left of my phone is a really nice piece I found at the tail end of my walk



So that covers the “love.” What’s the hate?



Bugs. Well, Ladybugs. I don’t know anything about the life cycle of this insect, but the beach has just been infested this week. There are long stretches where it’s impossible to walk without stepping on the damn things. And when they land on you they stick. Yuck. Yeah, I know there are all sorts of cute Ladybug stories and there’s something about letting the bugs stay on you and make a wish or some crap like that? I’m over it. They’re gross.

We had a decent sunset tonight






And on my way back up to the house, I ran into a couple I’ve been noticing all summer. Why have they stood out so clearly? Because of this guy:



Meet Sam. He’s a very large very old dog whose hind end doesn’t work so well anymore. So this is how he goes on his walks.

Cute, huh?