Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children
Number 420
Rugs
Hello Everyone
There is nothing we like more on a chilly, miserable winter’s afternoon as a family than to gather round the coffee table at Auntie Alice’s cottage and play board games.
The children get to choose what we play and if they can’t agree, they take it in turns to choose.
Playing with numbers, doing lots of counting and adding numbers together makes children very familiar with numbers and it helps with their maths lessons at school.
And it is fun!
Under the coffee table is a big, fluffy rug which is very snuggly. lt is very nice to sit on.
Maybe you have rugs in your home too – but they might be laid on a hard, wooden floor.
You may have a rug that has a picture on it or even a game like snakes and ladders – so when you play on the carpet – you really play on the carpet!
Auntie Alice has wall to wall carpet in most of the rooms in her cottage. That means that there is carpet over the whole floor. lt makes her rooms very cosy indeed.
She doesn’t have carpet in the kitchen or bathroom in case something gets spilt on the floor. She does have it in the dining room so we have to be extra careful not to spill anything in there!
Up until the 1960s and 1970s, people used to have large rugs or carpets covering their floors and around the edge of the room you could see bare floor boards. The floorboards in old Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian houses were much wider than they are today.
Then people started covering their whole floors with carpet. Some of it was patterned; some of it had very long fibres and looked like the surface of a big teddy bear. lt was called shag pile.
Nowadays, people very often have hard wood floors with a carpet near the sofa or bed or a large one in the middle of the room, this has been the fashion for many years now – so in a way fashion has gone full circle.
The earliest rugs in Europe would have been animal skins and woven, rush mats.
Before carpets arrived in Europe the rich had hay strewn about the floor and this would have been replaced every day by servants.
Carpets were first made in Ancient Egypt 5,000 years ago and the Middle East and Turkey is still famous for making beautiful, quality rugs because of their superb knowledge and skills.
Rugs were important to nomadic tribes. They could be quickly laid onto the ground to create an instant and comfortable floor to sit on.
ln the New World, the natives of North America had to developed rug-making skills. They often had nomadic lives like the desert nomads of Arabia and could take carpets with them as they travelled to make their homes more comfortable.
The first rugs made in Ancient Egypt were woven tapestry-style and did not have a pile.
Rugs in Ancient Persia, nowadays this area is called lran, made about 2,500 years ago did though. The carpets were made by knotting lengths of wool or silk onto a base. Sometimes even threads of real gold or silver were used!
Large carpets are laid onto the floors of mosques for people to kneel on when they pray. ln Christian churches you will see pictures and statues of Jesus and Mary and angels and saints, but this kind of thing is not allowed in mosques so you will see exquisite decoration instead. This can be seen in walls and floor coverings.
Rugs, and also glass, were brought back to mediaeval Europe by crusaders through the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. The rugs made stone floors warmer to walk on. The glass in windows made rooms warmer too.
Carpet-making factories were set up in France to make rugs for the king. The carpets were like works of art they were so cleverly made. Moorish influence in the south of Spain meant that carpets were being made there too. Only the rich would have been able to afford hand-made carpets.
Rug-making skills travelled to England and The Netherlands in the late 1600s with French Protestants having to leave Catholic France and find a new place to live so that they could practice their faith.
Oriental rugs were still imported too and have been up to the present day.
But the skill of rug-making continued to travel across Europe and Scandinavia so by the 1700s and 1800s many countries were making their own.
Then of course the process became mechanized – that means that carpets were made by machines in factories.
Carpets today can still be made of wool; they can also be made of man-made fibres.
One of the most famous carpet makers in the world is Axminster.
Their story started when a weaver called Thomas Whitty made a trip to London and saw a Turkish carpet that impressed him so much that when he returned to his home town of Axminster in Devon he tried to use his skills to recreate something of similar quality and after several months managed to do so. The year was 1755.
He created what is known as the Axminster method of weaving.
Over the next few decades, his company produced carpets for royal and aristocratic residences up and down the country; and even abroad.
Today, Axminster Carpets is a family-run business, taking its name from the town in which it is set up, and the only company to create its own yarn before weaving it into carpets.
The wool used to make the carpets is selected from different breeds of British sheep. A cold and damp climate means that the sheep which live in it evolve to grow warm, good-quality wool.
Axminster carpets have a reputation for being high-quality and hard-wearing and are used all over the world. Although these carpets are laid in large houses and luxury hotels and restaurants, anyone can buy one for their home.
Of course, you could also make your own rug if you are a crafty sort of person with a lot of patience.
You could make a mat by plaiting strips of fabric together and sewing them into a spiral shape. These mats are very like the woven rush mats of mediaeval and Tudor times – but made from off-cuts of fabric.
Or you could make a rag rug which is tying tiny strips of fabric onto a base.
Or you could buy a rug-making kit, and with the use of a tool called a latch hook, create a very beautiful rug with a pile – it will probably have a nice pattern or picture on it.
Making things with your hands is very relaxing after a hard day at school.
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And see you again next Fun Friday!
Love and kisses
Salty Sam
www.christina-sinclair.com
Bill and Bob’s Joke of the Week
Bill: Knock! Knock!
Bob: Who’s there?
Bill: Lennin!
Bob: Oh, no, l’m sorry Len’s not in right now, he’s gone out shopping.
Salty Sam © Christina Sinclair 2015
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of material from this blog without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited.
Links may be used to www.christina-sinclair.com
Picture Gallery
Shag pile
Oriental carpet
Fabric mat
A latch hook
THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK
This week Auntie Alice knitted a pouch for Emily to keep her packs of cards in. She loves playing happy families and other card games. This pouch is big enough to keep a large pack of cards in or two smaller packs.
This is black and green but you could make it in black and red or red and white to match in with the colours of playing cards.
NEWSDESK MINIMAKE
A BAG FOR KEEPING PACKS OF PLAYING CARDS IN
PLAYING CARD POUCH (KNIT TWO)
Using 4mm knitting needles and black dk yarn cast on 26 stitches
Knit 50 rows of stocking stitch
Change to green dk yarn
Knit 4 rows of stocking stitch
Cast off
TO MAKE UP
- Crochet 70 chains into a length of the green yarn
- Using over-sew stitches and right sides together sew along the sides and base
- Thread the cord through the top of the bag and tie the ends of the cord together
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Quick Quiz
What do these phrases mean?
- to have the rug pulled from under you
- to hit the ground running
- to be floored
- as thick as two short planks
- to sweep it under the carpet
- on the fringes
- to be a door mat
- a badly fitting rug
- to go in at the ground floor
- to pull someone over the carpet
- a slip up
- fringe benefits
lt’s the Weekend!
HOW TO MAKE A LlVlNG ROOM SOFT FURNlSHlNGS SET FOR A 12” DOLL
If you have a living room for your 12” doll that she likes lounging around in, you may like to make this set to decorate her sofa.
These colours are very strong and groovy but you may choose to use pinks and whites instead or neutral tones like greys, tans and creams.
You may prefer to use the rug as another throw.
SOFT RUG (KNIT ONE)
Usually when you knit narrow stripes into a piece of work, you carry your yarn up the side of the knitting and the excess yarn will be hidden in a seam, but for this item you need to cut off your yarn every time you join on a new colour.
Using 4mm knitting needles and purple dk yarn cast on 31 stitches
Slip 1 (knit 1, purl 1) repeat last 2 stitches to end of row
Slip 1 (purl 1, knit 1) repeat last 2 stitches to end of row
Repeat last 2 rows once
Change to pale green yarn
Knit 4 rows of garter stitch
Change back to purple yarn
Knit 4 rows of garter stitch
Change back to pale green yarn
Knit 4 rows of garter stitch
Knit 1 row
Knit 5, purl 21, knit 5
Repeat the last 2 rows 19 times
Knit 4 rows of garter stitch
Change back to purple yarn
Knit 4 rows of garter stitch
Change back to pale green yarn
Knit 4 rows of garter stitch
Change back to purple yarn
Knit 1 row
Knit 3 rows of 1×1 rib as follows:
Slip 1 (purl 1, knit 1) repeat last 2 stitches to end
Slip 1 (knit 1, purl 1) repeat last 2 stitches to end
Slip 1 (purl 1, knit 1) repeat last 2 stitches to end
Cast off ribwise
TO MAKE UP
Tidy the ends of yarn by threading them into the rows of the knitting.
THROW FOR SOFA (KNIT ONE)
Using 4mm knitting needles and green dk yarn cast on 32 stitches
Knit 2 rows of garter stitch
Slip 1 (knit 3, purl 3) repeat last 6 stitches to last stitch, knit 1
Repeat last row 3 times
Slip 1 (purl 3, knit3) repeat last 6 stitches to last stitch purl 1
Repeat last row 3 times
Repeat the last 8 rows 4 times
Knit 2 rows of garter stitch
Cast off
TO MAKE UP
Tidy the two ends of yarn by threading them into the edges of the knitting.
SQUARE CUSHIONS (KNIT FOUR)
Using 4mm knitting needles and purple dk yarn cast on 16 stitches
Knit 20 rows of stocking stitch
Cast off
TO MAKE UP
Sew around the edges with wrong sides together to make the sides of the cushion nice and crisp. Put a little bit of stuffing in just before you seal up the fourth side.
ROUND CUSHION (KNIT TWO)
Using 4mm knitting needles and green dk yarn cast on 150 stitches
Cast off
TO MAKE UP
- Curl the strips of knitting round and sew across them again and again to make a solid coil of knitting.
- Sew a button onto the centre of one piece.
- Put a little bit of stuffing into the centre of the two pieces and pinch the two halves together.
- Sew around the edges with wrong sides together.
Please note that the material on this blog is for personal use and for use in classrooms only.
It is a copyright infringement and, therefore, illegal under international law to sell items made with these patterns.
Use of the toys and projects is at your own risk.
©Christina Sinclair Designs 2015
Quick Quiz Answers
- to have the rug pulled from under you – to have your life change drastically and suddenly
- to hit the ground running – to start a project and work on it quickly
- to be floored – to be at a loss to know what to do
- as thick as two short planks – stupid
- to sweep it under the carpet – to hide the facts from other people
- on the fringes – to be operating on the outer reaches of a situation
- to be a door mat – to be mistreated by others
- a badly fitting rug – a badly fitting wig or hairpiece
- to go in at the ground floor – to start working at a low level in an organization with a view to working your way up
- to pull someone over the carpet – to tell them off/berate them/scold
- a slip up – a mistake
- fringe benefits – added benefits in addition to wages
