Colonial Mills Rustica - Whipple Blue 2'x7'

I was so excited to find what looked to be such a lovely wool braided rug to replace the one I had in my kitchen for so many-many years ... and especially in the WARM RICH RED COLORS shown in Hayneedle's photo for ""Audubon Russet."" The rug appears to be very well made. But ... what on earth is with the color? The thing delivered today is a bland grayish-tan with an odd bit of orange here and there to only slightly interrupt what is otherwise a rug so monotonous as to border on gloomy. Bitterly disappointed. But I have to have a rug, and I'm sure it would be quite costly to ship it back. At any rate, if you're thinking of buying Colonial Mills' ""Rustica"" style wool braided rug, do not imagine the color you see on your monitor/screen is even remotely descriptive of reality.

We had had (most of) a set of Colonial Mills braided rugs in our home for more than 30 years and when the last one finally needed to be replaced, I was delighted to see that the company was still in business and still making braided rugs. Unfortunately, over the years that quality has gone down. For weeks now, we have been living with the small clumps of wool that are abraded from foot traffic coming from those rugs that are located in the kitchen and hallways. Also, the end of the run of braiding sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest of the rug instead of being smoothly worked into the rug so as to form a rounded oval instead of an ill-fitting, abrupt end to the braid. Most disappointing is that unlike the earlier rugs, the braiding is obviously looser because our dogs are able to pull up loops of the yarn without much trouble. Probably would not choose Colonial Mills again, although if I didn't, I wouldn't have braided rugs at all because at least theirs were moderately affordable!