Recycling

This is a lot more fun, and so much easier, than bagging up the newspapers and schlepping them out to the driveway.  As you can see, I'm moving right along on the paper-mache cat.  No, I haven't forgotten the ears.  Those will be attached soon.

I decided to try an alternative to the wallpaper paste for applying the paper strips.  I mixed up a batch of flour and water and added some white school glue. It's holding well, and was less expensive than the paste because I already had the ingredients.  Each layer dries overnight, so I'm able to make fairly quick progress.

I'm not sure what I'll do with the finished kitty, but he won't be traveling back to Connecticut. I'd have to buy him a seat....and someone else has very likely reserved 17C.  Maybe he will sit inside the sliding glass door here in the Calcondo and greet the passing parade--the gardeners, the meter reader, the cable guy, and the occasional curmudgeon.  

In local condo news, last week we were notified that a tree in our backyard was dying from an infestation of bark beetles and would have to come down. 

This past Tuesday was the date decided upon for the felling.  Mr. Gadget was not at all happy.  How could they possibly do a day of sawing and wood chipping while we were in town, he wondered.  Certainly, he said, they could have checked with us first.  But apparently bark beetles are nasty little critters that wait for no one.

We planned our day with several errands that would take us away from the noise.  First, we took a walk to the farmers' market and bought fruit and some tasty little cakes.  It's kind of like the Walmart of farmers' markets--a place where you can buy things like cakes and tamales and balloon animals.  When we returned to the condo two hours later, this is what we saw:

The tree was gone, the mess swept up, and the dust had settled.  Mr. Gadget was thrilled to have most of the day to sit in his sunny, quiet lounge chair.  And I was very happy to have Mr. G sit in his lounge chair with his nose out of my crafty business.  I'm pretty sure the only ones who weren't happy about how the day was going were the bark beetles.