A place to start...

The hardest part of any project is taking action to make the first step. I have decided to make chicks out of miniature bottleneck gourds. Bottleneck gourds are the familiar gourd with the hourglass figure. Mine are about 3 inches tall and fairly uniform in color. The pinched in part of the gourd is going to be the neck of the chicken. I chose this view to help s how how a gourd turned on its side can seem to be a baby chick if it had eyes and a beak.

I can use my t-handle reamer to make the hole in the bottom of the gourd so a dowel can be inserted and glued into place. That will be the beginning of the spring-loaded push-me automaton described in the post titled Backing Up to Simple.