The ugliest rug in Morocco

A few months ago I started looking at all the garbage piled up in various places and seeing that I had about a thousand plastic grocery bags lying around. YOu get plastic bags with everything in Morocco and then they go to the garbage and then they blow all over the place and then, well, a beautiful country starts to look like a multicolored plastic garbage dump.

So I decided to start playing with plastic bags. I braided them into some pretty good cordage, I started weaving with them and then I figured, what the hell, I’ll weave a rug out of them. I cobbled together a loom from some broken wood, bought some twine to thread it with, and started experimenting with weaving a rug. My loom was about 2×3 feet. I ran 20 piece of twine up and down it and I started crumbling bags, tearing bags into strips, and just doing whatever I could think to do to see what works.

The aim was to figure out a way to turn trash into treasure and to clear the landscape of the plastic bags. I figured if people could make useful things from garbage, then it would cease being garbage, it would get collected,and nature would start to look natural again.

It’s possible.

I finally finished my first try. Certainly I’m not a weaver and I have no training or knowledge of how to do this, I just did it, as I do most things.

The result, I now proudly present, is without a doubt the ugliest rug to ever be made in Morocco. My skills and technique improved as I went, but still check out this monstrosity.

None the less, I call it success. The next one will be better. I might even ask someone to tell me how it is really done instead of just bumbling through it as I did with this one.