Missouri Rug

I love how sisal feels against my bare feet. That's the one big reason why I bought a coffee colored sisal rug from Crate and Barrel and had it custom fit for the floor of the trailer. It has a rubber back, and I can roll it up and shake it out when I want to clean, but sisal is also very sweepable so I can take a broom to it if I want. It looks natural and rustic and warm but isn't too shiny and new. We are talking about floor space of 5' x 6' so there's not a lot to cover. The original floor of the trailer is pretty rough --a worn and funky speckled linoleum. The ugly side of sixties design. But I am not interested in trying to pry it up or put new flooring over it. Who knows how uneven that tiny patch of floor really is? So I went for this less complicated solution. In my process of renovating my 80 year old house, I figured out that common color tones on floors and walls, make a small place seem larger and that is certainly true for The Happy Camper. I even find myself sitting cross-legged on the floor now, which I never did before. I could do yoga on this rug. Meditate.
The tangent to this story is the place that customized the sisal rug for me: Missouri Rug. It's an old rock building in the middle of an otherwise normal everyday neighborhood. I think in a earlier life it was probably a small neighborhood grocery. It has that look about it. At one time--about fifty years ago, you could have walked there to buy a bottle of Nehi and an orange push-up. There's an upper floor and I think someone lives up there, maybe even the people who run the shop. Missouri Rug doesn't buy or sell rugs. All they do is clean them, or rebind them, or in my case customize the size. The place is pretty basic, just a large open room with an old wooden floor, part of which is elevated into a platform and off to the side-- a small cluttered desk. There are also some heavy duty sewing machines. They deal only in cash, no debit cards. The fellow who helped me was taciturn but amiable. I handed him a little square of paper with the necessary dimensions and he promised me he'd have it by the next day. Which he did. And I paid him. Then I took my magic carpet back to trailer and rolled it out for a perfect fit.