Scratching Post

Well, it's not anything from the Arts and Crafts Movement, but it's a necessity if one is to protect one's Arts and Crafts Movement furniture, so I made Joe a scratching post. For the cat he doesn't have yet, for the house he hasn't built yet.

You may notice the presence of a paw and a little bit of a pink nose in the corner; that's my 1:1 cat, Ratty, for scale. Here's a better picture of him, sitting in front of the fan to keep his floof extra floofy:

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This one was pretty simple, though it took me a while to hit on the correct yarn for the 'rope'. In the end I used some silk yarn I had for dyeing, and twisted it back on itself, then glued it around a dowel. The bottom is two layers of matboard thick, made to look like plywood (though I didn't get a picture of the bottom), with a hole cut out to fit the dowel into in the first layer. That and the thickness of the 'carpet' (velveteen) is enough (I hope) to hold it all together with a bit of glue. The velveteen is a scrap left from the 70s, I'm pretty sure, and it's not as bright a green as the picture makes it out to be, but I figured it would work well with Joe's proposed earthy toned living room. It works pretty well for 1/6 scale carpet, I think.

Now Joe just needs a cat.

I've been looking at Craftsman house plans again, and I think I've finally figured out what I want to do with the staircase. I wanted the house to have a bit of an open plan, at least as far as the living room and entry way go, but it was very tricky trying to figure out which direction to put the staircase in, given that a dollhouse is strangely one-sided. I wanted it to have all kinds of lovely open woodwork, but I also wanted to get a piano on that wall. I think if the staircase opens out in the living room (rather than the hallway per se), then turns up and around, there will be enough room against it to put a (hopefully Manx) upright piano. That's what I'm going to shoot for anyway. We'll see.