Turkish Delight

HAPPY NEW YEAR'S!!! It is a little late, but oh well better said than forgotten. All I hope for is that 2009 is better than 2008. It has to be better, if it is any worse I will end up in the loony bin, I am sure of that. As the saying goes, 'What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger.' I don't know about that. My spirit and passion were killed a few times last year and I am still trying to repair them and I don't know how much stronger it has made me. I am more determined this year though. I am needing to make some personal changes and professionally I want to blog more. I want to educate as many readers as possible about area rugs. So onto today's topic, Turkish area rugs.
In July 2008 a client brought us three very bright and unique area rugs that her husband bought overseas. Unfortunately, I only took a picture of the three of them together, but you can get the idea for how bright and unique they are. They almost look Moroccan especially the fringes and the big knots used in the weaving, but they are wool on wool. That is why I classified them as Turkish area rugs even though the colours are very bright for a typical Turkish area rug. I have found that most Turkish rugs are dark colours, such as navy and browns with bright highlights. I call them masculine because of that. If I am incorrect please let me know. It is getting harder and harder to classify certain area rugs lately.





















The client was very happy with the cleaning as the colours popped even more afterward. She brought us the other three area rugs in Dec. These ones I took more pictures of. These three have more uniqueness about them. Box F has a fringe that is connected at the bottom. There is only fringe at one end of this area rug.
Boxes B and E are of the same rug. The back of this Turkish area rug is very red and looks blurry whereas the front is a faded orange as shown in box E. I do think that this rug spent time grabbing some rays before it was brought to Canada.
Boxes A and H are the same rug. There is a lot of abrash (different dye lots used in the weaving of the area rug). I am curious if the area rug was once all the same colour of orange and it just faded into the abrash or if there was always a shade difference between the orange wool used? I don't know how abrash starts out I just know how to explain it and recognize it.
Box C is the back of one of the Turkish area rugs. The picture doesn't show the ruler I used to measure the knots, so the wide part of the orange border is about two inches wide. Hopefully that gives you some indication as to the size of knots used in the weaving process.
These Turkish area rugs hit the cool chord with me. I love them because they are not your typical area rug and they add a lot of brightness to any room. I wish I knew more about the origins of area rugs. I would love to be able to tell you if these were woven in a village or a city. If they were made for selling or if they just ended up being sold at a market. Someday I will know and we can all learn it together.
Thanks for reading, RugloverMary

The King of Fringes

There are fringes and then there are Fringes. I do believe that these are the longest fringes I have ever seen on an area rug. What surprised me the most is that they are wool fringes. Usually wool fringes fray the quickest, but after chatting with the owner of the rug she spilled her secret to fringe longevity; She tucked the fringes under the area rug. That works!
I am curious as to why the weaver made the fringes so long. I just had a silly thought; The area rug was supposed to be 12 feet long but the weaver made it too short so they added really long fringes to make up the difference. I warned you it was silly.
Forgive me I am sleep deprived again!! I won't bore you with how happy that makes me feel. When you haven't had a good night's sleep in almost two weeks you realize that zombies really do exist. I am fast becoming a walking zombie. My roommate has been oh so happy with my moods lately . AH! The caffeine has kicked in so now I am thinking silly thoughts.

Back to area rug fringes. What would you do if you had an area rug that had 10 inch long fringes? Me? I would trim them back to around 4 inches after I took a picture of the rug with the 10 inch fringes,(my co-worker wanted me to say that I would trim them back to 9 1/2 inches to keep with the theme of silly thoughts, yeah not so much). 
The fringes make this runner very unique. I enjoy Turkish area rugs because of the uniqueness that is incorporated into them. Whether it be using florescent accents colours, really long fringes, the unique designs or the way they weave kilims. Turkish weavers seem to be very quirky and I like quirkiness. I do apologize, I seem to be rambling and not making a lot of coherent sense. I guess the Zombifacation is getting stronger. Huh! For some reason spell check doesn't recognize zombifacation as a real word, spell check has apparently never been in a city that has an annual Zombie Walk.

The colours on this Turkish runner compliment well, there are no accents of bright orange or pink to distract your eye away from the the overall pattern. I wouldn't mind if it did because that is what I like about Turkish area rugs as mentioned earlier. Love them or don't, Turkish rugs are a joy to look at!

Thanks for reading, RugloverMary