Dad’s Weekly Report

It is a better Sunday today than last week.  Sandy has been gone all week on her road trip and yesterday she came back home.  So it isn’t so lonesome.  Lyle and Emily also left for a family reunion.   It was awful quiet around here, just me and the dog.  Sandy was very nice, she left me with two pies.  I almost finished them off while she was gone.  She flew to Chicago and met her sisters.  The main purpose of the trip was to attend Roxy’s wedding, (her niece).  Then the four of them borrowed her brother’s car and took a road trip through Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, W. Virginia and Kentucky. They were able to see all of the church history sites in and around Kirtland, Ohio. Anyway I am glad that she is home.

One of the pictures that I am including in this letter comes from my last trip to China. I mentioned earlier that I was accosted on the street in Shanghai by an older gentleman.  He started talking to me in English and wouldn’t let me go.  He wanted to show me his art.  He did paper cutting and he took out a small piece of black paper and started cutting with a pair of scissors.  He had me turn to show a profile and cut out a profile of me.  The paper was folded in half so two profiles were created.  They are about 2 inches from top to bottom.  I ended up buying them from him for about $8.  What do you think?  Does it look like me?

The last weeks, while I was at the fort, I finished up my beaver trap.  What was left was 8 more links on the chain and a loop to connect the chain to the trap.  So now it finally finished.  It is the largest project that I have done.  So here is a picture of the finished trap.  To give you a idea of the size of it, the chain is about six feet long.  I have a couple more projects planned next.  First I am going to try to make a wrench, specifically a 7/8 inch spanner wrench.  Then I am going to try to make a pair of scissors.

Sandy came home with about 300 pictures from her trip.  One was of a sign that she found on the banks of the Ohio River in the town of Mount Pleasant, W. Virginia.  The sign is about General Joel Leftwich.  Joel is the older brother of Jabez Leftwich who is my 4th great grandfather.

Well what other new?  The berries in the garden are getting ripe.  We have picked about half of the blue berry crop.  I got one pie and there are 6 cups of blue berries in the freezer.  Tonight we are having blueberry pancakes for supper.  The raspberries are quite a bit more prolific. We have an over abundance of them.  The plants have grown 6-7 feet tall and some have fallen down against the fence that we put around the patch so they are hard to pick.  And they are quite delicious.

Well that is all that I can think of.  I hope that all is well with you.  Take care.