Magic carpet

Okay, okay. One last post about our trip, and then I'll move on to real life. 

One of my grand plans for our vacation was to buy a nice carpet. When you think about the Silk Road, you should probably think of carpets, since it goes right through Persia and all. Kashgar is still a big trading hub for all the central Asian countries, even nowadays where not many people travel by camel caravan anymore. Though we did see a man and a woman traveling by camel at one point. But anyway... Persian rugs.

In Kashgar we went to a few rug shops around town, one by the mosque and another by the bazaar. I love rug shopping! You walk from the busy, loud street into the little shop, and there's a sudden hush. The entryway, floors and walls are covered with carpets, and some even hang from the ceiling. And after all the available space for displaying carpets is used, the rest are rolled up or stacked flat along all the walls. Then the proprietor starts showing you rugs. He just starts on one stack and starts unrolling them and laying them out on the floor for you. They're beautiful. He tells you where each one is from, how old it is, if it's handmade, what it's made from. Each one has a little story. (It seemed like all the old ones were 80 years old. I'm not sure how you'd test that without being an expert-- which I am not.)

At some point, I start feeling bad that so many rugs are piling up and I'm not buying one yet. Once we leave, the owner will have to roll them all back up. But on the other hand, this time I am a real customer. I really do intend to buy one. And this is how you shop for rugs.

I can't really tell the difference between most of the rugs by region. The shops had Uzbek rugs, Iranian rugs (i.e., real Persian rugs-- China still trades with Iran, I guess), Afghan rugs, Pakistani rugs, and Kazakh rugs. There are different designs and different styles, and they're all very beautiful.

Kazakh rugs are quite different from the rest, though. Instead of a woven rug, it was more of a felt quilt. The designs, instead of being woven in, are other pieces of felt appliqueed in place. I don't know enough about it to say if this is always true, but in both the stores we went to, all the Kazakh rugs were this style.

We had kind of given up on actually buying a rug after the first store. But the next day we decided to visit another store-- just to look. The man started pulling out rugs and rolling them out. We told him we might be interested in a long one (for a hallway rather than a whole room). He pulled out rug after rug, and they were nice-- but nothing I could see myself buying or using. 

Then he unrolled the magic carpet. It made me sigh out loud, it was so beautiful. Some rugs had been overly bright-- reds and oranges. Some were rather dull-- just neutral colors with other neutrals. They were pretty, but matched nothing in our house. But this one stood out from the rest. It had red and blue, and then the background was white, making the designs stand out. The blue and red flowers were raised and fuzzy, while the white part were tightly woven and lower. It's made of wool, but the fringe is camel hair. (!!!)

It was really long. I thought it would fit our hallway, but Kevin thought it would fit our hallway plus half our living room. Turns out, we were both wrong. It fits our hallway plus about one foot of our living room. I think it looks marvelous.

So yeah, we bought it. The man started by asking 2400 yuan. I'm a terrible bargainer, so it's a good thing Kevin was there. We bargained for a minute, and then his friends came in to bring him lunch. We were offering 1800, and he was asking 2100. But when his friends came in, he just said, "Okay, let's just do 1800. You can have it." I'm sure he was happy with that price and didn't want to haggle in front of his friends. So, we were both happy!

After we got home, I went to Ikea to compare prices. Ikea in China sells Persian rugs-- from Iran. I guess China doesn't have a problem with it, and neither does Sweden. They didn't have anything exactly like this. Ours is handmade, and the ones at Ikea were machine made. One at Ikea that was a similar size, but only about half as long was priced at 9900 yuan. 

Um... we scored a deal! (Until you factor in plane tickets, of course....)

So here are the pictures of our lovely rug:

Isn't this gorgeous? I kind of want to make a corresponding quilt with red stars and blue sashing or something.
You can tell the rug is handmade, partially because the right edge isn't straight. In this picture you can see that it kind of bulges. But as they say, there are no straight lines in nature. Or in handmade stuff. :)

A close-up of one of the flowers. Each flower is a little different and not even quite perfect. But I love that it has handmade personality!
And I think that's Naomi's foot. I have a lot of help around the house-- whether I need it or not!

Camel hair fringe!

Room enough for Abu--even elephant-sized Abu!