General Travel Musings
buying a turkish rug: genuine or not?
Weaving a Turkish rug by hand is a skill that produces a work of art, and due to the increasing number in machine-woven products, this is becoming a fast dying art form. Owning a genuine Turkish rug is an investment as the market is now flooded with fake rugs. And finding a genuine Turkish rug is becoming a rarity.
Turkish rugs are renowned and so how can one tell
- if it has genuinely been woven by hand and NOT by machine?
- which is silk and which is mercerised cotton?
Here’s what we learnt from our few hours at a rug workshop in Turkey.
Background
To keep the trade alive, especially in the rural areas, the women are trained at the workshop for approximately 3 months. The first rug they complete is considered theirs to keep as a “reward” for their training. The second rug is assessed and, if the rug is approved, the woman officially becomes a rug weaver and can weave from home. All equipment is provided.
The weavers have patterns to use when weaving rugs. Each one is different and depending on the region/era that the rug is made, the colours and pattern can vary. With their religious faith, they believe only Allah (God) is perfect so no rug will be weaved as perfectly as the pattern. Each rug, in fact, will have a slight flaw or error, usually unnoticeable but not always.
To weave Turkish rugs, weavers use a 2-knot technique which essentially makes the rug stronger, tighter and easier to clean. Ultimately this results in durability as well. But this also means that it takes longer to weave. A Turkish rug can take anywhere from months to years to hand weave. When explained to us, we could understand how the amount of work and skill put into weaving a rug justifies the cost of a genuine Turkish rug. To ensure the women can maintain their trade, they are expected technically to have regular breaks (approximately every half an hour or so) throughout the day.
Hand or Machine?
A few tricks of the trade to help identify whether a rug is hand woven or not
- Hand woven rugs should be stored rolled up in shops. The quality should be questioned the moment rugs are kept flat and stacked on one another.
- Hand woven rugs when flipped over on the reverse side will have an almost identical pattern as its front.
- The tassles on the ends of the rugs are part of the rug and not “stitched” on. The rug should be woven in between the tassles.
Is it really silk?
Mercerised cotton and silk have very similar appearances. But the difference between the two materials is silk can’t be set alight when brought close to a flame or won’t “fluff” when a coin is rubbed against it. Silk rugs can last hundreds of years and when you look at it from different angles, the colours on the rug will appear as different hues.
The process to obtain silk from silk worms is a process in itself. From one silk worm cocoon, a mile (1.6 km) of silk, on average, can be extracted. And when silk is woven, it was described as being as strong as steel. That certainly raised our eyebrows.
We visited the carpet weaving workshop, nearby to Saklikent Gorge, certified by the Turkish Government and the Carpet Weaving Association. Buying at these Turkish Government workshops, we were told, you will get an authenticity certificate posted to you within 6-8 weeks. Ours arrived within 2-3 weeks of us returning home. Depending on the size of the rug, it can be arranged to be shipped to you. Because ours was a small wall-hanging, we figured we would just carry it home with us. They packaged it really well.
Almost 3 months on, we still are yet to frame our “rug” and find a spot on the wall for it. At the moment, it is sitting underneath our World Map and acts as a reminder of a magic carpet that can take us anywhere 🙂
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our travel wish list
As December 25 is fast approaching and kids have made their Christmas wish lists for Santa, we’ve been writing up a list of our own.
Our own wish list but one might liken this list to a bucket list which is something we’ve never had! Things like sky-diving and bungee jumping and white water rafting have been done by one wise monkey already and to be honest, the other has no interest or even an adrenaline drop in her body. But because our list only contains travel stuff, it might be more appropriate to call it a ‘travel wish list’!
Should a genie ever come out, here is what we have, for NOW, on our travel wish list (or “official travel bucket list”) that can run alongside our unofficial bucket list and our retrospective bucket list.
These are not listed in any particular order or priority:
1) Walk the Camino de Santiago
2) Visit Carcassonne & Mont St Michel
3) See the Egyptian Pyramids and Sphinx
4) Go on an African safari and see the big FIVE
5) Visit the Disney theme parks around the round: LA, Orlando, Paris, Japan, Hong Kong
6) See the House of Green Gables on Prince Edward Island
7) Photograph penguins in Antarctica
8) See Iguazu Falls, Niagara Falls, Victoria Falls
9) Witness the Northern Lights
10) Have a white Christmas
11) Experience 24 hours of sunlight
12) Float on the Dead Sea
13) Welcome a new year with celebrating NYE in NYC
14) Chase a solar and a lunar eclipse somewhere
15) Get to at least base camp of Mt Everest
16) Hot-air ballooning at the Albuquerque Ballon Fiesta
17) Road trip across America
18) Attend the Naadam Festival in Mongolia
19) Visit Christmas markets around Europe
20) Go in search of bears in Canada or Alaska
21) See gorillas in the jungle
22) Go husky-sledding in Scandinavia
23) See polar bears in the North Pole
24) Visit Russia (at least Moscow & St Petersburg)
25) Hike/trek in the Patagonia
26) Volunteer overseas
27) Visit Santa’s village in Lapland
28) Attend:
a) a FIFA World Cup
b) an Olympics
c) a Wimbledon match
d) a Premier League game in England
e) one game of each of these in the USA: NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL
f) an Ashes game in England
29) Ice-skate in an open-air rink on a wintery evening overseas
30) Self-drive around Iceland
This list is by no means exhaustive and will be forever evolving! Now, we will need to think of what we want on our non-travel bucket list.
Here’s to hoping that we wake up one day & a genie materialises while we’re polishing that lamp! Maybe on Christmas day?
Have you done any of the items on our travel wish list?
Please do share a link to your “experience” so we can desire it even more 🙂
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travel memories on our tree
We LOVE this time of year because we LOVE Christmas! It’s 2 weeks from Christmas and our tree is now up – yes it is an artificial one 😉
As we added the different ornaments, we began reminiscing about our travels because some of our decoration are our “souvenirs” from our travels. It was only back in 2009, while we are at the Empire State Building did we think it would be a good tradition to start.
And since then, we have added several more to our tree. It’s not always easy to find Christmas ornaments, as it can depend not only the time of year but also the place you visit. But these are not the only things we pick up as our souvenirs 🙂
Our families are in Sydney so Christmas is great because we get to spend time with both sides – minor downside is that its always hot! Maybe one day, we get to experience a true white Christmas somewhere…
MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
HOPE next year brings you all lots of joy and travels 🙂
Thanks to GlobalMouse @ GlobalMouseTravels for inspiring this post during our twitter conversation.
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did we miss a bullet? literally, quite possibly
When we saw today’s Daily Prompt: Close Call, we knew we had to write about two experiences that happened to us while travelling, as told by Mrs WiseMonkey.
Have you ever felt a feeling or an inkling that you couldn’t quite explain? Then it finally dawns on you that it was your instincts all along & that some greater being out there is looking out for you. Bet I am making absolutely NO sense whatsoever at this point but please bear with me for a few more paragraphs before running away.
Let’s retell a story so you know where this post has come from.
Back in the early months of 2013, we were both dead-set on going to Africa. A safari through Kenya and Tanzania is something we’ve always dreamed about and so we booked it. As the weeks and months rolled on, we got our vaccinations, got prescriptions for malaria tablets, even got as far as applying for our visas.
However, our visas got knocked back because we had applied too far in advance. It needed to be within 3 months of leaving. Maybe that was the turning point. Come mid-June, a few weeks out from when we needed to pay off the balance for the trip, I become agitated about going to Africa. There is no rhyme or reason, i just keep getting this feeling of a lack of enthusiasm to go to Africa – something I’ve never felt about any holiday before. So I have a conversation with hubby that goes a little something like this:
Me: Are you sure we want to go Africa? We still have time to change our minds.
Him: What makes you say that?
Me: I’m not sure. I’m just checking that this is really what we want to do. The balance for Africa is due next week, and we just need to be sure that’s where we want to go.
Him: Well, where would we go instead?
Me: I dunno. There’s plenty of other places we want to see.
Him: Ok, well, let’s have a think and then decide….
Me: Well, we need to decide by next week
Similar conversations ensues each day for another 2-3 days, and for some reason, I recall feeling like a nag but I also remember feeling we urgently need to make a decision. So we settled on Turkey.
I thought nothing more of it until September 21, 2013 – when we were meant to be in Nairobi, we were in Istanbul instead, not realising what was happening in Nairobi. Militants had stormed a mall and were holding hostages and killing people indiscriminately. When I found out about this 3 days later while Skyping my family, I got goosebumps and I wanted to cry! I actually want to cry now while I write this 2 months on. The automatic questions that flew through our heads when we had heard this: Could we have been at that mall? Would we have been lucky to escape or possibly been one of the victims? Would our holiday have been tainted by being in a country where so much pain had just been caused? Would we feel safe anymore or want to jump on the next flight back home?
So many questions where we would never know the answers. The only thing we know is that we went with my instinct to change our plans and were now safe! Close Call Number 1.
You see, this story may seem coincidental or pure luck but this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.
Beginning of this year, when we were flying back from Orlando, we had a massive layover in Los Angeles. We normally get a room at Hotel Hacienda to freshen up until our flight home. This time we had booked a hotel at Santa Monica to spend some time by the nicer part of town and we were really looking forward to going there. It had been 4 years since we were last there and wanted to just enjoy the day.
However, as our flight was preparing to take-off at Orlando airport, I turned to hubby and said,
You know what? I actually don’t feel like going to Santa Monica today.I don’t know why but I would prefer if we just go to Hotel Hacienda near LAX like we always do and just chill out. I know we’ve already paid for Santa Monica but to justify paying for another hotel, it will cost us the same to catch a cab to and from the airport to Santa Monica anyway. So technically we break even.
That seemed a reasonable explanation to hubby so he agreed.
It was that evening as we turned on the TV in the hotel to watch the news that we found out that there was an armed robbery in Santa Monica and there were police car chases through the streets with 2 gunmen: with one allegedly loose on foot by then. When we looked up on google maps where this was all happening, it was one street away from the hotel we would’ve been staying at. Hubby turned and looked at me and dropped the remote control he was holding. I was stunned myself. Close Call Number 2.
wise monkeys abroad 