Legless chicks

(apologies for the gratuitously misleading title to this post, couldn't help it)

Inspired by the Chickens of Normandy, and confined to the house due to a prep day for a "virtual" colonoscopy*, I felt the need to stitch something relatively easy and slightly pointless.

It starts with a little baby chick getting all stitched up and trimmed to size:

And then here are some beakless birds, waiting for inspiration to strike:

which it did, in the form of little pieces of folded metal from a tomato puree tube. 

So here are some beaky chicks:

Just need some legs now!

(Nothing "virtual" about it in terms of the prep day, I can tell you - luckily the actual thing itself just involved lying in superman position under a large doughnut-shaped X-ray machine for 5 minutes)

The Holiday of the Chickens

As mentioned previously, last week we effected an escape from the country.

Basically, we packed the Girl off to school with her suitcase on Monday morning, then legged it.  We even had the theme tune from The Great Escape in the car on the way to Folkestone...and while the Girl and her teacher and classmates were chugging their way across the Channel in their ferry, we were under it on a train on our way to France.

And after many hours of tunnelling and driving, we arrived at the Gite of Chickens, somewhere in Normandy:

Yes, we spent our holiday photographing chickens.  And watching chickens.  And teasing chickens, by making them run for breadcrumbs.  (Have you ever seen chickens run?  Hilarious)...And that cockerel, he was well and truly hen-pecked - the chickens even stole food from his beak.  Didn't stop him waking up at 5 every morning, though...

Chickens, the last Wallander book, a cold beer....bliss.

We did venture out occasionally, to enjoy a meal a deux

The John Steele being this chap, suspended on the church at Sainte Mere Eglise by his parachute on D-Day.  You'd have thought someone would have helped him down by now...

Inside there's quite a bit of stained glass dedicated to the American parachute regiments (most notably 101 Airborne, of Band of Brothers fame)

But mostly, we just sat around and looked at this

Heavenly.