The Toto2 basket kit stalled when photographing the instructions, and underwent a minor redesign. Necessitating more prototypes and models, etc., as everyone who has ever been involved in bringing a product to market knows. At least I am my own boss and manager, and our production meetings are… relatively honest and supportive of everyone’s efforts.

Then I got distracted with designing some office supply products: a coordinated group of essentials, in different colorways. Here is the first, in gray, orange and yellow, that will eventually have a fashion name like Southwest or Urban Warmth. The kits will consist of a horizontal file holder, a vertical file or magazine holder (not pictured), a cache pot, and a trash bin. Oh, and coordinating file folders. The trash bins would also make stylish planters, given a coat or two of planter-style finishing.

And then there was this development. One day I came home and noticed a small artifact on the kitchen floor… a tiny thing I knew was a prop from Argo Wool Works, which is next to the Sea House Warming Hut. Supposedly safely ensconced atop a six-foot tall cabinet, protected by a buffer wall of foam core. (Relegated there after the previous degradations on the work table.)

Breached. I knew not yet how. A day or so later, as I was working at the work table, I heard a thunk behind me and looked up to see Scarlett, atop the living roof. She is now agile enough to leap four feet in the air from the adjacent desk to plunder forbidden miniature worlds. And plunder and pillage she has done.

I documented these first raids, then cleared all the stuff, and her, out. There have been many subsequent scruffings, even though she knows it’s wrong.

The tiny shelves, once filled with wool products, are decimated. Her hopeful forays have been abated as long as I remember to position my Luxo lamp at an upward angle, blocking the leap from lower desktop to shelf top.