Allison is such a loving child - she shared her cold with both AJ and I....and it took us down hard.  She bounced back in just a day, but both AJ and I were out for a few days.  I did almost nothing but sleep one entire day.  I'm still dragging, and manage to make it through the day, but that's about it.  Hopefully the worst is behind me and I get some energy back!  I have things to do....like finish this baby quilt that I got started....

 

Well, the chicks "we" hatched didn't survive.  Cindy think she had the heating set up wrong for them.  The babies she bought (the Welsummers) are doing good though, and I think she plans on trying another batch of eggs.

 Spring is here - everything is blooming.  These bottlebrush flowers are the neighbors.

 

Cindy has the chicks now - and they are out of the incubator. 

 

She also picked up some more chicks - Welsummer chicks.She's put these in with the Araucana chicks - since we don't know haw many, or even if any - are female.  We were both hoping to get some Easter Egger chicks, but all chicks are in high demand right now and go fast when a shipment comes in.  The Welsummer breed is a good layer and tolerates heat, so should be a good addition to my flock.

One quilt finished!  The original plan was to get it done by Valentine's Day, and I had it partly quilted by then, but...it got set aside for a bit.  I got it quilted and bound this last weekend.

 

Sunday was a fun-filled, interesting day.....as a lead in to that, "we" have chicks hatching.  The eggs in the incubator at Cindy's started hatching Saturday afternoon. 

How does that fit in to a fun-filled interesting day???  Sunday was a "jewelry making party" at my house.  I had 7 extra women here (8 if you count Karen, who came in to watch Alli for me) chatting and making earrings, bracelets, necklaces, etc.  We had so much fun!  And then....we lost power.  The fun continued, as I went out to get the generator going, which I manged to do fairly easily.  Then, it ran out of gas.  Bummer.  When I went to add gas, I did not notice that there was a hole in the plastic gas can, so managed to poor gasoline all over the generator and myself.  Just bit frustrating.....and then I couldn't get it to start.  Sigh....good thing AJ was home - he got it started with one pull.  (Of course he did....)  Time to get gas off of me (with no running water because the generator doesn't run the well) and back to the part.

Cindy also lost power at her house, and by this time had 4 chicks that had hatched in the incubator - one hatched after she left for the party.  She does not have a generator, so....she fetched the generator to my house.  So now we have a bunch of women oohing and awwing over chicks.  The fun times continued!

I barricaded the incubator - the cats were way too interested in the chicks and kept pulling the line to the water out (keeping the humidity regulated is important)

 And some of the earrings I made....

 

Just how did they do this?  I was cleaning up the sewing room yesterday (not much sewing this weekend, bummer....) and noticed that the thread on my sewing machine had mysteriously been re-routed.  Somehow, "someone" managed to get the thread from the spool wrapped around my speaker.  Good thing I noticed before I sat down to sew.....

 And the quilt top for Wooly Stars is complete!  I love it!

 

One more block done for the 2025 RBD Challenge.  This turning out to be a fun quilt - lot of little things done differently than I usually see. 

I have all the quail put together for the first row of The Gathering quilt...they aren't sewn down yet, but I'm "getting started" - always the hardest part.  The Quilt Club meets this Saturday, so I probably won't have it completely done, but better than last month (I didn't even have it started for last month's club meeting, so I started out behind for this month.)

Applique is still not my favorite quilting method, but I absolutely love this quilt, so I will persevere...

My flock is done!  They turned out so cute!  I did have a bit of an issue with one....can you see the problem?

I had the blocks all up on the design board, and didn't see it.  AJ walked in and when I showed him my progress, the first thing he said was "Did you see the one in the middle of the top row?

 

All better now......

 

 

We were 80 degrees yesterday, and sunny!  It was a beautiful day for a walk.  We are back to rain and temps in the 50's staring tomorrow, so this was just a stolen day of Spring....

Since I started the Woolly Stars quilt, I found I had a need for more mini-design boards for my quilt pieces - there's a lot of little pieces of fabric in those quilt blocks!  I made up 6 more of these:

Yesterday was a red-letter day - I got an egg from all three chickens!  It is finally getting light/warm enough for them to start laying.  We were in the low 70's yesterday - unusual for February, but welcome.  We are scheduled for mid-70's the rest of the week, and then more rain and lower temps, so I'll enjoy the warm weather (and fresh eggs) while I can!