Summer Bummer

Summer Bummer represents the threat of cyanobacteria and other toxins resulting in beach closures on Lake Champlain, as reported in the Lake Champlain Basin Program’s 2021 State of the Lake Report and updated in 2024.  This is a Tunisian crochet wrap depicting the summer beach season, starting on the sandy color in May and extending each day by one wavy row into deep blue in September. The beads represent the number of Lake Champlain beaches that were closed on one of the days between Memorial Day and Labor Day according to the records for 17 public beaches. These closures resulted from either elevated levels of cyanobacteria or coliform bacteria and data for 2018-2020 are combined in this piece. The maximum number of beaches closed is 7 for any given summer day in this dataset. The earliest closures occur at the end of June, and the greatest numbers of closures occur in July and August. 

More details available here on Ravelry.

By Michale Glennon

Previous
Previous

Chickadee

Next
Next

Greta