Speed Maché: Fly on the Wallpaper

Set Maché layer 3: DONE! Looks a little like snow in Halfland.

It's getting to the *good stage* where the shapes are holding form more strongly. It's a pleasure to press the paper firmly into the sculptural texture for solid contact and strength when dry. I switched over to my big tub of wallpaper paste to use with the newspaper as the liquid starch made such thin material too delicate to press well down.

Kathud: There are cat shelves high above Halfland where our 18 pounder, Jeremiah, took to sleeping all day last week. I was working on the creek when--BAM! he fell straight down onto the far left side of the set while still asleep! It was a particularly reinforced part and he was a bit stunned for a while. He limped that night from landing directly onto a front shoulder without knowing he was going to hit. Poor babe. He seems perfectly fine since then and has returned to his rigorous 23 hours a day of sleeping (not kidding), on lower ground.

Last week I spent a goodly amount of time creating the creek enclosure or lipped edges of the waterway that will hold the billowing material where it belongs to better approximate flowing water. I twisted newspaper into cords and taped it all along the 17.5' (5.334 meter) (!) streambed. Then I incorporated that contour into the set with additional brown bag paper maché.

We are nearly out-of-doors here (no window screens) and are visited by various kinds of small animal life; bumble bees, wasps, sparrows, crickets, etc. The other day this large black beetle fellow paid us a call. Dig those fancy feets! He kept climbing up to the top of a folding screen and falling off. I snapped this picture which only then revealed to me what he was trying to do... it caught his surprise wings as was trying to fly off! I haven't seen him again, I hope he made it.