So now its a New Dawn that Iraqi's are waking up to, looks like Operation SSDD to me. its reprehensible that US and UK politicians can think that they have made such changes that they pull out US troops, UK already turned tail, leaving this ravaged country with a devastated infrastructure, in a political shambles with a rabble for its security forces. There's not much reason to look back at the crimes perpetrated by George Bush and Tony Blair in their "weapons of mass destruction" fallacy, except to say that Saddam Hussain isn't quite so much the evil dictator as both of these goons are. In Bush's case, stupidity ruled his inadequacy as a President, Blair on the other hand I'm sure knew what he was doing, he needed his Thatcher/John Major moment in history. Enough of them, how about the thousands of lives lost, our brave US/UK and coalition warriors. And then, what of the 100's of thousands of Iraqi's ? For what? what they are left with is a beautiful country ruined by the egos of western meglomaniacs. Whatever Saddam was, and none would want him back, ordinary Iraqis had power, water, food and normalcy of a sort, untainted by massive car bombs killing scores of people. The real winners in all of this are indubitably the Kurds of Northern Iraq. As for the rest of Iraq, I can only see this going down in history as another shameful episode of imperialism, both Britons and Americans should be thoroughly ashamed at this result. As to Afganistan, lets not even go there. Not trying to draw any parallels, with Saddam in Iraq, but Gengis Khan was the last "warlord" to hold Afganistan in check ............. et al ? Yes questionable !

Now, I am not usually one for profanity, but just lately I find myself wanting to say WTF about the mysterious and totally B****cks goofiness which is categorised as Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Anyone else out there running a small business with a website who is as flumoxed as I am? I get bucketloads of offers from dubious companies offering to get me into the top 10 placements of my chosen "keyword or words", or links that I "buy" from them. Now I am not talking small beer, sums like $1-5,000 are bandied about. Who are these bandits, Google employees ? The internet is just a den for thieves now, and the honest truth is that they cannot guarantee you absolutely anything. I confess, I have fallen afoul of them a company called Axandra, from Germany, who took $250 of me, and promised me the known world ala Monty Python's Life of Brian when Brian's mum states that he is the son of a Centurian called Naughtius Maximus, who promised her the known World. In the end, my license ran out before I used the program and they demanded another $250 for the updates to be able to use it ..... another case of buyer beware ! My bottom line here is this, never mind all the shysters out there promising you the Known world of SEO, we like they are all bamboozled by Google who change their "algorithm" as often as a lady of the night changes her panties. And, the reality check, no one knows what the heck their algorithm is, or even what it does. I rest my case !

Now this is an exceptional example of Turkish Anatolian weaving, it is more than 100 years old, Circa 1900, there are possibly only 2 or 3 people on this earth, who are still alive when this was made. Dazkiri is a small town in the province of Afyonkarahisar in Western-Anatolia close to the Turkey's Agean Mediterranean coast. Few if any rugs have been made in this region for decades, most village cottage industry having migrated to the coast around Milas. Why is this rug important, well there are extremely few examples still existant, never mind in as excellent condition as this one is. It is made from fine sheeps wool, naturally dyed, a facet of this is that there is absolutely no colour bleed from the walnut and saffron dyed wool into the natural wool surrounding the large main medallion. Dazkiri villagers were unique in their selections of colours, yellows, brown walnut, almost orange hues and pristine undyed natural wool. This rug is Abrashed, meaning the rug has colour variences from its beginning to the top, because the weaver ran out of her dyed wool and had to sympathetically try and match a new batch, this is not an exact science and so colour variations in old rugs are a natural occurance. The closest example I have seen to this is exhibitted on Barry O'Connell's BLOG about Turkish Rugs, an example sold at auction 3 years ago for 18,500 Euros, check that one out at this link DAZKIRI RUG . Mine is in perfect condition, I have owned it for around 5 years now, found it in Cappadoccia on a rug hunt, on horseback, with a Turkish friend of mine, one weekend when I wasn't sailing.

Well here is a superlative addition to the TTCC website, a translation service powered by Google. I have been deliberating on this oft times and yet there was a very easy solution right before me. This is in its early days, I want to add a few more languages to it, not the least including Arabic, Farsi, Turkish and a few more other than middle-eastern languages. Really, its not that I want or intend to sell to people in those countires, altho' all selling is good. But, as my web site progresses, I want it to be informative as well as a platform for making money, after all this really began for me as just an interest, not a business. And so it has progressed to such, but I'll never lose sight of the fact that I am supplying a unique item to my customers, and so I want all of them and anyone else who visits my site or reads my blog to have the same privilages. I hope this addition proves useful to all, and I'd certainly like some feedback. I have it also in mind to replace this BLOG with a more user friendly interface, which will allow more interaction, its in the wings and just will take me a little while to develop and test before going fully online. For now, for all of my international visitors, I hope this will make things easier for y'all. Best regards to all, Paulo.

The Turkish Carpet Company Talking of Turkish rugs, I have just come across this excellent BLOG by a gentleman called Mitch Weisburgh from a couple of years ago entitled "What I learned buying a rug in Turkey" its both humerous and informative and well worth a read.  Here is the link: http://academicbiz.typepad.com/piloted/2007/01/what_i_learned_.html.

 

I have used eBay as a selling platform for my rug business for 4 years now, well until March of this year when I closed my store and set up my own fully functional website store here on TTCC. To be sure eBay did give me great exposure, and generally speaking it worked fairly well. So I hear you saying, "why did we fall out" ? Well, for 2 perhaps more reasons, and I am sure my reasonings will apply to millions of other small businesses and what are they, well number one would be the change in the way they displayed "ALL" listing; prior to April 2010  my listings both auction and often store items would compete amongst mebbe 250 others, and often times still littered with 100 kilim cushion covers which had been listed as vintage or antique, what a joke. Well, laudably my customers still found me amongst all of that and I guess I averaged around 150 sales a year which allowed me my indulgence of my hobby and made me a credible living also. After April, my 1 or 2 listings were suddenly competing with upwards of 3500 listings, and sales dried up faster than a pond in the Sahara desert. Reluctantly I closed my eBay store and set about fully promoting my products myself on my own website the TTCC. Now this is still early days, as when i launched it I would be around page 30 in Google page rank listing. Today I am top of page 2 and soon will achieve my goal of being on page 1. I am gonna blow my trumpet now, I am competing with thousands of rug companies with stellar budgets. I'm told that the coveted place on page one will probably value my company at 1/2 million dollars or more, this is not the most important thing for me. I'll still promote my ethical sale of excellent quality Turkish and Oriental rugs at a good price to my customers. As to eBay, perhaps I will still list the odd rug here and there just to keep my hand in. When I first started using them, in total my costs averaged about 5 percent, now they charge a whopping flat rate of 9 percent, and the only method they offer of accepting payment is their offshoot company PayPal which takes another 3 percent, all told 12% now who can exist with that, and there are no guarantees of sales. My customer base will increase again and sales too I am sure. Will I miss eBay, probably not, will they miss me ? I doubt it, my $6,000 a year they made off me is a drop in their vast Ocean, now extrapolate that by several million small businesses like me who jumped ship and yes they'll be hurting. Will they win us back, probably not I think we have all learnt our lessons from them all too keenly.

I have been thinking about this for a little while now and have not really ironed out all the wrinkles, however the largess of it is, I am going to hold a "monthly" (to start with) blind auction for a rug of my choosing, on the TTCC website. I'll choose a nice rug and feature it including a guide price, almost like a reserve price, which will be less than 1/2 of the value of the rug. I'll invite bids by email which will be held by myself until the day of the auction. On auction day, I'll accept telephone bids, even from existent email bidders on the bidding day, and of course the person with the highest bid will win. If no one hits the reserve, I'll email the reserve price to all bidders and then I'll accept the first past the post telephone call. Could be a lot of fun, I'll get to perhaps sell a few more rugs and my customers will get some bargains into the "bargain", any comments or suggestions please email me @ paul@theturkishcarpetcompany.com Keep sweet, Paulo.

Well Sep 29'th the embargo on importation of many things Iranian comes into effect, including rugs and carpets. For some like myself this will have zero effect on my business, as I really do not deal in Persian/Iranian, for others this could be a big deal. The last embargo lasted from 1987-2000, lifted by Clinton, I doubt that would have transpired under Bush.. There could be a few things which transpire as a result, the prices of rugs as a whole could go up which would be a good thing, as prices have been depressed these past two years since the w***er bankers kicked us all in the goolies. Secondary to this it may force the Pakistani/Indian weavers/exporters to own up to the origin of their produce, I really can't see many people returning from their oriental vacation with a declared Persian/Iranian rug only to be stripped of it by US Custom, but you never know, some people will be totally ignorant about this embargo and how it affects things.

It is so poignant that I can not be with all of you to celebrate my mother's life. Alas, I had to return to the United States. But, I was with her, together with my 2 sisters, when her time came and that was what was most important to me.

I don’t know where to start so untypically I'll start at the end, my mother passed away peacefully and she is now one with my father James Moran and the universe and that is good. She was a most gracious person, and throughout my life has been a continual source of help across all aspects of our human condition, she was my mother firstly and then friend, confidant, teacher, source of succor, chider and a person who never placed blame but raised awareness. In particular, during the worst time in my life, 5 years ago, she raised me up, gave me a reason to put the past behind me and carry on, she said to me that all things pass and that time will heal a wounded spirit, for that I'll always be eternally grateful and thankful that she was who she was. But, I do know that no amount of time will heal the loss of my mum.

This comes to me like a giant 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle from which I have now lost the most important pieces, something I will now never be able to solve again. She is those lost pieces of a puzzle which I'll now have to put back in the box, yes to revisit from time to time, but it'll never be whole again.

I will miss my mother in so many ways, no more phone calls waking her at 11 PM because I was dippy and forgot we are so far behind in time zones here in Oregon, no more shopping for gifts which would be just perfect for her, no more flowers on 2 mothers days, UK and USA, no more sharing fish and chips from Greenhill’s chippy in East Kilbride, Scotland and most of all no more comforting hugs making it all good again.

Thank you mum for all you are to me and always will be, I love you and miss you more than these words can say.

I am and always will be proud to call you mother and to be your son.