An eggcident

Something clearly went wrong here....

Yesterday I went to the nest box to collect the eggs and very nearly missed this miniature egg. It's definitely from the chickens as it's shell matches their normal eggs, but it's tiny, about the size of a cadbury mini egg. Normally they lay creme egg sized eggs (on the top left), which given my bantams are half the size of an ordinary hen is still pretty impressive, there's a normal egg on the right for scale. 

Who knows what happened, the egg itself is normal, with a yolk, it's just like it's been shrunk however. The chickens are there usual perky selves, with the exception of the one who has gone broody already, so I don't think it's a problem, just a rather intriguing bit of chicken biology!

Goodies in the post...

Look what arrived today!

Two new drum carders from Paul at Classic Carders. These are on long term loan for me to take out and about with me when I run workshops.  It's a good relationship for both of us, I have more carders for the workshops, and people get to try out Paul's carders who might not have seen them before. The UK fibre industry is great like this, for the most part businesses are highly supportive of one another. When things like the huge postal rises get announced we tend to band together and try to work out how to get round things. 

I've been working on a semi-secret project with Paul for a while now, and hopefully he'll be launching that something new at Wonderwool. I love working with Paul, he's passionate about what he does, and strives for the absolute best in every single carder that he sends out of the workshop (these 2 are supposedly cosmetic seconds because of a blemish on the wood and I can't find the blemish anywhere!). He actually lives just over the border from me, I visited his workshop last summer and we had a lovely discussion about how he started his business, and the technicalities of drum carders.

I use a Classic for all the carding I do for my shop, and hands down it's the carder I recommend. They work fantastically, Paul's customer service is great, and they're made in the UK.
I'll be taking these 2 around the country with me over the next few months, so they'll be put to the test by lots of people.