Photos of Weaving and Buying Rugs from Pakistan....

Rug Buying in Pakistan....

The Old Fort in Lahore -- Rudyard Kipling's old stomping ground.	Street scene in Peshawar, Northwest Province. Japanese mini-trucks are rapidly replacing the horse-drawn tonga carts.

Rug Weaving in Pakistan....

Vegetable dyeing wool with isparuk (yellow) and madder root (red) in Peshawar.	Making graphs for fine floral rugs in Lahore.Even the graph paper is lined by hand.
Making the talim (a weaver's instruction sheet in a kind of shorthand) from the graph.It takes days to copy the design.	Closeup of part of a talim. The weaver reads the talim from left to right; each row of symbols represents one row of knots across the loom. Each symbol tells the weaver how many knots of which color to weave in the row.
Weaving a fine floral Kashan using a talim (in front of the loom, between the weaver's legs).Better-quality rugs are woven almost exclusively by men.	We've just paid for this Bokhara; the weaver seals the deal by putting his thumbprint on the receipt.
Clipping fine Pakistani rugs over rollers.	Soaping up a Kashan in the washing.
Using paddles to force all the wool clippings and dirt out of a rug during washing.	Kashans hung up to dry after washing.
Straightening a crooked Kashan by moving knots down the warp strings. Don't try this at home! We try to avoid buying rugs that have had this treatment.