Saturday, September 12, 2009

The armchair traveler

When you're a full-time resident of Cape Cod--tourist mecca of the Northeast--folks assume that your life is a year-round vacation, and to some extent that's accurate. The truth is, the most exciting place I've gone all summer is to Boston's Logan Airport to pick up our son visiting from Texas. Work, houseguests, the economy and a myriad of other obligations kept a vacation this summer out of the cards. Luckily our next-door neighbors, whose kids are out of school, married and self-sufficient, are more flexible--they just returned from a glorious cruise to Alaska!

To thank me for not killing their houseplants while they were gone, my neighbors brought back a terrific photo of a lighthouse for me. The photo above was taken as the cruise ship was leaving Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and heading north. But which lighthouse was it? The cruise ship social director didn't give a blow-by-blow commentary--my neighbor could only tell me where the ship was when the photo was taken. I went on an online search-and-discovery mission to find out which lighthouse it was: Point Atkinson! A new lighthouse for me, and the third Canadian lighthouse to be adapted to needlepoint, Point Atkinson will also be my first lighthouse in British Columbia.

More research will be necessary before I can design a canvas: I never paint a lighthouse design without several photos to go by, and I suspect the angle of this photo may not be suitable for my ornament format. I'll be back when I've found just the right photo to work from and have come up with a design!

4 comments:

Possibilities, Etc. said...

This is absolutely gorgeous, and I'm looking forward to yet another lighthouse. I'll ask Sam if he saw it when he was up there last year. That's great landscape around it.

Cyn said...

Hi Anne,

The photo is beautiful and I'm looking forward to seeing how you will interpret the Point Atkinson lighthouse in needlepoint. :-)

Cynthia
Windy Meadow

Napa Needlepoint said...

There are a few sites which have more information about BC lighthouses, although from what I've seen it's pretty spotty if there are lots pictures.

Here are three;
http://www.fogwhistle.ca/bclights/ - this one is nice because you can find the lighthouse by map, picture, or name.
http://www.lighthousefriends.com/pull-state.asp?state=BC - This one is the BC page from the main lighthouse organization.
http://coldwell.smithersbc.net:5910/john/Lightkeeper/Lighthouse_Photo_Pages.html - this one has lots of pictures.

Keep Stitching,
Janet

Jan said...

I'm glad you're doing another lighthouse! If I'm not mistaken, you have several states that don't have a lighthouse in your series. So I hope you continue to research and bring us new ones to enjoy. I'm looking forward to this one on an island. Don't make us wait too long.