Word: rugged
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...morning the newspapers are waiting for me on the breakfast table. The crossword puzzle is filled in, and my husband is upstairs in his office. I take the papers and my second mug of coffee to the living room. The little girl dog lies in a spotlight on the rug. At ten o'clock, I go upstairs to my study, a former sunporch with nine windows and never enough bookshelves...
...angular armchairs; there's even a breathtaking view of the Oslo Fjord. But look closer. The small silver plates and golden sculpted boats in one such room are from Bangladesh; the green-and-gold tea set, with its five matching cups, from Thailand. And the black-and-gold rug hanging on a wall is among the finest you would find anywhere in Pakistan...
...Conversely, even if you got a great price on a rug that doesn't fit in your apartment, you're still a sucker. Early on, I decided that I much prefer simple, single-knot tribal rugs that have a homespun quality to them, as opposed to the grand, Persian, double-knot silk carpets that go well in a living room full of ivory elephant tusks. This may mean my tastes aren't very elevated, but it has saved me a lot of money...
...Another rule of thumb: Life is unfair, and everything comes a lot easier when you don't really need it. I did my best-ever bit of bargaining killing time on a layover in Istanbul, last January. A rug trader lured me into his shop and showed me a beautiful Anatolian kilim. "I'm on my way to Iraq, I don't want to buy a rug," I kept telling the guy, as the price kept plummeting...
...avoid the embarrassment of an expensive purchase on the one hand, or from paying too much for a rug you wanted too badly, think about the big picture. And the big picture is grim...