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White flotaki is part of a vast conspiracy to make city dwellers feel inadequate about our housekeeping, as we fight the invasion of black dust spores every time we open a window.

I thought they were just a way to make us all feel groovy and shaggable, baby!

I'm torn about flokati rugs. They shed like crazy and seem to get dingy with dirt and dust fairly quickly. But I think they are really cool-looking, and feel great on bare feet.

I actually replaced the 6'x9' flokati in my living room with flat-weave jute/wool rug because I got tired of chasing around the dust bunnies that would appear every two days. It then sat in a closet for 2 months, but is now in the bedroom in front of my bed. (And, yes, the dust bunnies are back.)

Hot or not? HOT look. NOT practical--for neat freaks, at least.

Oh! One more thing... Go to overstock.com for better prices. The 6'x9' flokati I purchased has pretty thick pile and was priced at around $90 plus free shipping.

Ugh. I like the look of flokati, but it always makes my feet itch and the whole fur thing skeeves me out. Can't they make a high quality fake version?

Mary--Flokati rugs are are not sheepskins; and are therefore not really fur. They're woven from SHEARED sheep wool. (No dead animal pelts here.) Not much better if you're a hardcore PETA person, but definitely not fur.

Seems like you could wash them. I'd bet that the sheep end up sstanding out in the rain sometimes, no? But they're not usually standing out in the rain with Manhattan smog sticking to them, but I'm thinking maybe ... Woolite might work? What with it being made of wool, and all.

I love the look in the right place. And the idea of something real without having to kill anything is kind of nice.

I lusted for a flokati the last couple of years but now I think I'm flokati'd out. The perpetual dust bunnies post makes me want one even less now.

As for the sheep standing in the rain thing, brings to mind my eternal question - if wool often shrinks when you wash and dry it, and if sheep are warm blooded and hang out in the rain, shouldn't there be a flock of constricted sheep out there somewhere?

Why do you think the sheep go baaa-baaaa? They'd roar if their throats weren't constricted by all that shrinking wool.

wende you made me laugh! I am so bored at work I risk dozing off and drooling into my keyboard...zzzzzzzzzzzzz....

Enrique -- my friend's flokati has a skin on the back, although that may be fake. I didn't look too carefully because I just thought that was kinda nasty... and I was too busy scratching my feet.

wende -- I'm guessing that the lanolin keeps the wool from getting too wet, plus when you block [stretch and dry] wool you can stretch it all you want into any shape you want. It's quite elastic. The sheep are doing fine...

It's the agitation that shrinks wool, not the water. Wool hand washes quite well. I even put my flokati in the washer recently and it came out fine. I wouldn't recommend the dryer, though. You might end up with felt.

Let me tell you the sad tale of my lovely red flokati. First of all, it did shed EVERYWHERE. Everywhere! I think my "nesting" project this month is probably to get the remaining flokati fibers out of my boring beige apartment-bedroom carpet.

So, I had this cat. He was a great cat, but he was old and sick. The poor cat threw up on my poor flokati a few months after I got it. I had to wash said flokati. We have a pretty fancy front-load washer, an LJ knockoff of the Maytag Neptune, which has a normally-pretty-effective hand-wash cycle. Did it work on my flokati?

Well, the flokati, which was not dried in the dryer, felted in the cold-water wash and is more like a rug of dreadlocks. Still usable, but it's a different look. It did at least come clean.

I'm not sure that you could dye a white flokati black (black is a difficult color to achieve outside of a dyeshop), but since it's just wool, it should soak up dye pretty easily. I'm certain you could attain a pretty vivid color if you dyed it at home. Dharma Trading Company (dharmatrading.com) is a good retailer for dyes. The only concern that I have about it is that you, too, might felt your rug. Otherwise, dyeing wool is pretty nontoxic and something you can do easily at home.

If you use the right amount of dye, there's a chance the rug will actually soak up all the color particles, leaving you with only a barrel of water and vinegar to throw away. Use "acid" dyes on protein/animal fibers like wool or silk. It would probably be easier to do this in a portable tub than in a washing machine, because hot water is required; the agitation of a washing machine would be more likely to felt the wool.

(I bought my red flokati in red. I believe the Home Decorators Collection at homedecorators.com sells several grades of flokati in a wide range of colors, but no idea how the quality or service is. I've heard bad things about the quality of their furniture elements, which are mostly pretty middle-of-the-road to begin with. But there are 15 colors in the standard flokati collection, 18 in the premium!)

First of all: LG, not LJ, on the washing machine. And I've washed wool and cashmere sweaters on that handwash setting with no problems. But the flokati was having none of it.

Second of all: "I bought my red flokati in red" means, of course, that i have not experimented with this dyeing business. But since it's almost entirely wool with the exception of any carpet tape on it, I stand by the idea that it would be pretty easy to dye... if you wanted to make over a white one.

So don't agitate your sheep and they'll do just fine.

Poor agitated sheep.
They don't have anything that they can count to get to sleep....

cute. would prefer it in black.