Hey Tony - you think you could also take a few decades of leather expertise and cram it all into a 60 minutes powerpoint presentation for me?
You gave me a migraine with your list. Even with my 3 days hands-on format, I can't cover everything you listed - at least not in way that would give people practical take away know-how to apply to their businesses.
First of all - I hope things are okay with Ruth. I always get nervous with personal reasons. She and I do not see eye to eye on many things... did I point out on MANY things... but I hope things are okay.
That said... learning 90 minutes of rug ID will help you point out machines made, some hand made, a few needlepoints, a dhurry or two, maybe a braided rug, if you are lucky an Afghan piece ... but you would only learn enough to confuse you - and nothing directly applicable in any way, shape or form to CLEANING rugs.
This is my biggest argument with the
IICRC RCT course - that they teach a test to ID just a fraction of the rugs in the world, with no direct relevance to the cleaning craft. A 50 year old hand woven wool rug from Turkey and a 10 year old machine woven wool Karastan rug - the cleaning methods would be the same. A silk rug and a needlepoint may be cleaned exactly the same - regardless if they are from Turkey, Kashmir, China, or Iran.
If the test had been written by real rug cleaners - then you'd have a scratch and sniff test - "hey this wool rug with cotton foundation smells like cat pee - what do you soak it in first?" - Those are not the questions you have.
It reminds me of when I got a 98 on the
CCT class, but had no idea how to turn on a truckmount. I could memorize the facts to pass the test (I'm good at written tests) - but there was NO hands-on aspect to the course.
So ... if I have 90 minutes here - I'd rather address some CORE id skills that are relevant to cleaning, and perhaps cover some pre-inspections skills that can save your butt when cleaning. This may not be exciting for the old-timers - but it would be immediately relevant AND valuable to those just getting into cleaning, or new into it. I could also cover some ckey rugs to run from on the market as well.
90 minutes is not a long time ... so I want to make sure it is useable info int hat time.
Any thoughts? I'll be giving a rug and restoration presentation to the ASD class on handling textiles from floods - so if you are going to ASD (and you are NUTS if you do not take advantage of that
Mikeyfest ASD price - I've NEVER seen a price that low...) you will get that presentation. But for the bulk of the corwd - some basic how-to, and also talking about odor removal with Odorox, and topics in my head for this last minute plan.
Let me know what you think....
Lisa
