Dad's Daughter

I am most definitely my dad's daughter.


He had a sense of humor and laughed out loud if something was funny. So do I.


He liked cooked onions in any form. So do I. Give me a bowl of sauted onions, and I'd be happy!


He always cared about the "underdog." So do I.


He would get "sick headaches" once in awhile. So do I. Ow.


He was faithful at church, an example I've done my best to follow.


He didn't know a stranger. We used to go to the mall, Mom and I would shop, Dad would sit out on one of those seat things and yak with whoever sat down. I'm on the shy side, but I notice I'm pretty comfortable yakking with store clerks and checkout people when I go shopping.


He just couldn't "get it" how I could read music and play all that ... they just looked like little black dots on the page to him. I just couldn't "get it" how he did all that stuff with radio and tv repair, working with the cable system, doing electrician work - it was (and still is) all a great mystery to me!


He was very musical - chording on the piano "by ear," and singing, though he couldn't read a note. He had great harmony when we sang hymns in church! I MISS THAT. Though I learned to read music, I can also do stuff, both singing and playing, by ear. Both of our boys are showing this, too!


Since I got the fair entries done, I've jumped into another quilt project. There's a popular book out right now called The Farmer's Wife Quilt Sampler. It contains letters written by farm women back in the '20's, about whether they would encourage their daughters to marry a farmer or not. But it also includes quilt blocks, and the patterns to make them. There are 111 (count 'em!!!) different blocks you can make. Well, I picked WAY less than that, and am working on making them. The blocks are only 6 inches when done, and contain various sizes of pieces, sometimes VERY LITTLE pieces. But I'm having fun, and I enjoy that process of picking fabric, cutting out little pieces, arranging them, sewing them, seeing the finished block.


As I sat at my sewing table this morning cutting out SEVERAL very little triangles for a "Rosebud" block, I thought how not everyone would enjoy such tediousness! But I'm enjoying it. Then, I got to thinking of Dad with his "copper wire sculptures." After he retired, but still had the shop, he used the copper wire out of leftover cable to make different kinds of sculptures such as windmills, cars, farm machinery, buggies, planes, you name it. So we were/are alike in that, too --- tedious creativeness! He didn't work from a pattern, though, just what he pictured in his head, he made.


Dad at work soldering copper wire together to make an old-fashioned car.




Dad making a caricature of a fisherman. His brand of wit came out in these figures! Very unique.




Dad getting ready to put a sculpture on display. That's his shop window in the background, and those windchimes that are hanging, he also made.



So Dad may have been gone quite a long time now, eight years this last spring, but a big part of him lives on in me! I'm definitely "Daddy's Girl." :)