Quilts and Chickens

It's been a long three weeks but we have been patient. Changing the water each day and supplying fresh food for our broody. I have been chatting to her (yes...I know!) and this evening she rewarded my witterings with allowing me to see what is going on under her wing.

We have a teeny tiny beak!

One egg has lost a tiny piece of shell and there is a little beak poking through the membrane.

Just the one at the moment, and I am totally hands off - after all, I am a midwife in training and there is no need a the moment to intervene - however, I do have my SCBCU (yes there is an extra letter in there - Special Care Baby Chick Unit) ready scrubbed and set up just in case! Of course, in chicken-midwifery one reason to be completely hands off (alongside the fact that there is no need to fiddle with nature) is in order for her not to then reject or eat the eggs because they smell of human and it scares her. From day 18, you need to not touch or pick her up at all - really hard to resist when you just want to have a wee peek...but it's a great learning curve for the future, waiting is rewarding.

Clinic in operation

Incubation and heating lamps

So I will keep you updated with the progress of baby one and mummy over the weekend as we hope that by Sunday we may have one new member of the clan, if not more?

So far as life has been speeding by, I've been working a lot this week so it seems that my feet have hit the ground running as Mr Beehive has been away in Istanbul for the week too.
This weekend I'm not working, so am looking forward to the sunshine that has been predicted and probably the usual shenanigans of British Barbecues and sunburned skin!

My friend Emma's son, Arthur, turns one in July, so I have been busy at the quilting again. It turns out it's pretty addictive. I've made him a small quilt in some very jolly and almost aboriginal colours and patterns. I'm calling it Uluru! Hopefully he'll like it...okay, so scrap that, I'd prefer Em to like it because I honestly suspect Arthur won't give a flying fig!

Finally we're still doing renovations to the house. This week we had someone around to strip the lintels as we're having double glazing put in. Of course, in a house this old, one job is never just that. One job, it would seem leads to a plethora of other jobs - rather like a Russian doll...or the magic porridge pot. We have bowing lintels, the worst of which is under LMB's room (do you remember the tree that nearly hit her room when it fell down in CT? - it would seem she is jinxed!).

Obviously we need to repair this, for her landing on our laps in the living room on a Friday night would seriously upset our evening ;-)

Oh and she's lost another tooth, so we're raining in spit and lisps this weekend too - poor lovey, but she does look cute!

Theee, I've lotht two teeth!

Have an Eggciting weekend, I hope we will !