I’m going to close out 2015 with an oddball topic: carpeteering. I had my first taste of carpet mania when my friend told me about the fervor over the original PDX carpet, which I had the opportunity to see for myself when my husband and I flew to Portland in June for a wedding.
Then after Comic-Con I was reading an article about the intense Hannibal fandom (Fannibals Forever!) and it linked off to an article about Hugh Dancy’s hobby: carpeteering. Hugh’s friend had launched an online database for airport carpets called Carpets for Airports that allows people to submit photos and reviews of airport carpets around the globe. Because Hugh was traveling quite a bit to promote his projects he started submitting his own reviews (Isle of Man, Edinburgh, Dublin, etc.), and one time his interest in a Boston airport lounge carpet even got him kicked out “for security reasons.”
The background music when you land on the airport carpet website homepage is so bizarrely foreboding…but I kind of love it.
Anyway, that’s the backstory of how I became acquainted with the extremely niche hobby called carpeteering. I dipped my sneaker-clad toes into the carpeteering waters twice, with PDX carpet in June and then STL carpet in November. But does carpeteering have to be limited to airports? I don’t think so!
In my Friday Five last week I posted a photo of a turtle shell-patterned carpet that I discovered while visiting Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut and promised that a post about their carpets was forthcoming. Well, as promised, here it is. 🙂
The turtle carpet was just the first of many crazy carpets that adorn the casino floor at Mohegan Sun. I’ll share the turtle carpet here again for you:
After I noticed the turtle carpet I realized that nearly every section of the casino had its own carpet pattern, so I started snapping a pic with my iPhone every time the carpet changed. I must have looked like a complete weirdo (and probably embarrassed my husband…sorry, honey). I’m actually surprised casino security didn’t say anything to me—I know casinos can be strict about guests taking photos. (One time a couple years back, possibly at Mohegan, I took a pic of a slot machine called “Kitty Glitter,” because KITTIES and a security guy asked me not to take photos of the machines.)
All in all, I photographed 16 distinct carpets solely in the casino area of Mohegan Sun, along with a few other carpets in the hotel lobby, hallways, and our hotel room. I’ll spare you the non-casino carpets because they’re less interesting, in my opinion. I want to note that I did Instagram a few of the below carpets while we were at MS, but I held most of them back so that I could share them here.
And now, I shall present Mohegan Sun Casino carpets, in the order in which I found and photographed them:
Another section of the same carpet:
These last two are similar and I believe they may have been part of the same overall carpet.
Crazy, right? I went a little nuts each time I stepped onto a new carpet, and I was quite honestly more interested in the floor than in gambling. I think my favorite Mohegan Sun carpets are the nature-themed patterns, like the turtles (obviously), the pine cones, the sunflowers, and the koi. I wouldn’t carpet my home with any of these, but they sure made for super fun discovery for a budding carpeteer. I think I’ve earned the right to call myself one, right? Thank you, Mr. Hugh Dancy, for the inspiration.
Thus ends my final post of 2015: #carpeteering. Be safe tonight and HAPPY NEW YEAR!
