One of the things we did in Istanbul was to go to a carpet shop to learn about how carpets are made. Last year we met Cemal, who owns a shop in Sultanahmet. They have recently expanded their business and brought in a loom to make pestemals. Pestemals are thin towels made of silk and cotton and used in the Turkish bath (hamam). When you go into a Turkish bath they give you a pestemal to wrap around yourself for some modesty. Cemal has taught all of his staff to weave, and they have been weaving pestemals in the shop for sale in addition to their carpet business. Any time any of them don't have customers they go to the loom and weave. Turkey was traditionally a big stop on the silk road, but there isn't a lot of silk spinning and weaving there now, so this is part of an effort to maintain traditional handicrafts (though weaving is not traditionally done by male shopkeepers!) The loom is a large traditional one, but also quite functional, and the sight of someone weaving in the front of the shop tends to draw a crowd. Cemal also has a small spindle for spinning silk for demonstration (they don't actually spin the silk in the store. He says there are a very small number of villages where silk is still spun, and he contracts with women in those villages to spin and dye the silk for him). Here's a photo of Cemal at the loom
The yellow, blue, and white circle on the top of the loom is an evil eye. The evil eye is based on the idea of envy as a force that has power to cause damage or injury. The idea is that if someone envies something you have (your loom, your child, your success, etc), this envy is itself a strong enough force to bring ill luck on you. The evil eye repels the force of the envy. If the evil eye breaks, this means that it has repelled a particularly strong evil force, and you should consider that you have narrowly escaped something horrible.
Behind Cemal on the bottom shelf are stacks of striped pestemals that he and his staff have made on the loom over the past year or so.
The yellow, blue, and white circle on the top of the loom is an evil eye. The evil eye is based on the idea of envy as a force that has power to cause damage or injury. The idea is that if someone envies something you have (your loom, your child, your success, etc), this envy is itself a strong enough force to bring ill luck on you. The evil eye repels the force of the envy. If the evil eye breaks, this means that it has repelled a particularly strong evil force, and you should consider that you have narrowly escaped something horrible. 
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