I’ve already failed to post ‘A Friday Find’ even on the second week of my self imposed ‘must do’. I’ve actually got a few bits and bobs that I picked up last weekend, but alas I didn’t have the use of the camera last night. A has gone off today to do a leg of the Tour de France in London with one of his friends.  And as he’s taken the camera, that meant there was no Friday night picture taking for me.

Anyway, these are some pics that I’d happened to take of his latest craft work: a giant rug for our living room inspired by the tiles on our vintage coffee table! A decided to make us one after we spent months and months looking for rugs for the room to no avail.  They were all either too boring, or not the right texture and the ones we found that we did like, were way out of our budget.

It has probably taken him about a year and a half to create this rag rug. He did it by the old style method with a grid backing and a latching tool. It has taken hours and hours and hours to complete! One day, I think he’s going to figure out exactly how much material it took in total.

You can just about see the table top underneath the tools needed for the job. A decided to make the background of the rug black rather than green as we felt everything was quite green in that room already! You can also just about see my retro egg chair that was a present two Christmasses ago. That piece of furniture might just about get its own entry on the blog one day.

During the making of this rug, the house was filled with tiny threads in the various colours from the rug. Wherever that rug went, so did the little thready bits, which we nicknamed ‘ragger’.  And that ragger got everywhere. I honestly mean everywhere.  One day, I looked down in the middle of a class to see a piece inside my tights. One of my students asked, “What’s that, Miss?”  I replied I wasn’t sure (my stock answer for questions I don’t want to or can’t be bothered to answer).  However, the pinnacle was when I found a piece of ragger inside my bra.  How it got there, I will never fathom out.

This is the back of the rug, showing the attention to detail for the pattern. I think A almost wishes that we could use it this side up as it fits in with his love of meticulous patterns. You can just see a little more of the inspiring table here as well.  The rug now looks fantastic in position. It is a lot cosier in the living room now and it feels much nicer to walk on that the other one we had.

Last year, A sold a couple of items to a man who was opening a vintage shop in Chorlton called Wowie Zowie. At the time, A was working on a much smaller rug that look like a packet of Smarties. This man and his girlfriend, apart from being flabberghasted by how much stuff we had that was similar to theirs, thought the rug was brilliant and suggested that A make some more for their shop. I’d love it if he could sell a rug like this that he’d made, but I’m not sure if he would ever do it. It’s taken so much time and effort, the rug would need to be sold for a thousand pounds I think!

Once I’ve got the camera back, I’ll post some pictures up of the 70s handicraft book that gave A the advice and instructions to make the rug. That book in itself is a beautiful slice of retroness! Until then, just imagine us with our matching table and rug surrounded by West German pottery. Perfect.