I receive a lot of “help me” calls from rug cleaners and rug owners on rugs that are buckling. They want to know what to do.

And my answer is usually… it depends.

That’s because there are a number of reasons why a rug is buckling on someone. Some of these reasons are correctable. Others are not.

Here is the list of different causes of buckling:

Weaving Characteristics

No hand woven rug is perfectly symmetrical. There will always be a little bit of variance in the width and length, and some fluctuation in the weaving tension throughout the rug itself.

A city rug (woven in rug factories in weaving cities) will of course have more quality control than rugs woven by tribal weavers. I personally prefer the tribal rugs because they have more character and personality.

Weaver using a horizontal loom.

That said, in some tribal weaving centers, especially in areas that are war-torn like Afghanistan, the consistency can vary beyond being an interesting weaving characteristic to being seen as a weaving flaw in some extreme cases:

Tension along end of this Afghan rug causes buckling.

Buckling from weaving tension changes, or width or length variations, are not unique to Afghanistan. You see examples of this in all weaving countries. And in most cases they are seen as unique characteristics of a rug’s personality. Like a few great laugh lines on a smiling face, or dimples, they are what make the rug have character.

And as with those lines or dimples, you can’t just take a steam iron and make those go away. There is no “Rug Botox” to use.

Sometimes a weaver – especially if the loom is a nomadic one – will not know the rug has a “buckling” problem until after it is completed and cut off the loom. In some cases a rug manufacturer will apply a sizing to the rug (similar to starch) to try to make the rug stiffer than it would naturally be.

The problem with sizing is that it will wash out, and it may be difficult to have it re-applied. So if you are buying a rug, or you are getting ready to clean a rug, you want to look closely at the shape of the rug and if you see any evidence of problems on the BACK side.

Creases can be clearly seen on the back of this Afghan rug. These are causing buckling on the front.

Sometimes a rug can be stretched to help it lay flatter, but this is a strenuous process that may damage the rug.

Stretching an Afghan rug to help it lay flatter.

In these cases you need to think about weaving variations as no different than one of your feet being a bit larger than the other. Think of what you would need to do to try to make them perfectly equal, and then apply that though to a rug, on the work that would be needed to make a side that may be an inch longer than the opposite one even.

It is often impossible to do. So your expectations need to be realistic, and if the variations are too much, then pass on purchasing the rug.

Material Backings

With embroidery, needlepoint, and hooked rugs, the buckling is often due to the construction especially if that construction includes a heavy material backing.

Embroidery needlepoint rug with a heavy cotton backing.

This type of weaving, though often very elegant, can also often not be perfectly symmetrical. And when you have two independent pieces – the hand crafted needlework and the material backing – that are loosely stitch to one another, this can create some buckling and waves.

Crewel stitch (aka chainstitch) needlepoint with material backing.

Hand crafted custom rugs using different fabrics and fibers can also lead to buckling, especially along the seams of there the pieces are put together.

Seam tape can split and buckle.

Seam tape can split under foot traffic, or with age, or from cleaning (especially if the individual piece are made of different fibers and may react differently during the cleaning process. Some fibers swell when wet, others condense. Some are stronger when wet, others are weaker. Some absorb more moisture and dry slowly, others dry quick. And these variances can split a seam if you are not careful.

Tufted Rugs (Latexed Material Backing)

Tufted rugs are the rugs you see with latex holding it together. Latex over time deteriorates and crumbles away, so often it is covered up with material to hide this kind of ugliness:

Old latex delaminating on a tufted rug.

Rugs are meant to be on a HARD floor, and not over soft wall-to-wall carpet. But, sometimes a soft floor is your only option.

While woven rugs (rugs you can see the design on the back of the rug same as the front) have some “give” to flex when over a soft floor, a tufted rug is not so forgiving.

Heavy furniture on top of a rug that is over a carpeted floor can stretch the fibers of a woven rug, and in worst cases create tears and holes. And with tufted rugs, which have a latex backing holding them together, they can create waves in the rug you won’t be able to get out.

Buckling in a tufted rug from furniture.

With these rugs, once they have been stretched from heavy furniture, and the latex backing cracks and bends, it’s damaged and will be very difficult to make flat again. It’s like when an elastic band gets over stretched, you can’t get it back to its original shape.

With woven rugs, you have a better chance of washing and reshaping a rug that has gotten buckles from furniture. And to protect BOTH types of rugs, short of putting them on top of a hard floor instead, you can seek out a stiff pad to place between the rug and the carpeted floor.

If your rug is tending to want to move and buckle even when it’s on a hard floor, then often a good rug pad will keep you from having any safety risks of people tripping on it. (Plus pads are “shock absorbers” for rugs and keep them from wearing from foot traffic as fast, and they also tend to deter bugs from wanting to find a home under your wool rugs. I personally love Durahold pad for rugs on hard floors.)

Edge Finishes (By Machine or By Hand)

Sometimes the ends or sides of a rug are finished a bit too tightly, or overdone, and this can create curling of a rug.

Heavy side cord wrap by hand on this dhurrie rug makes the corners curl up.

Machine serging of edges created curling of this rug.

The curling may be immediate, or only evident when the rug gets wet or damp. The level of buckling depends on how the fibers react to water. Some fibers get tighter when wet, and loosen when dry. This is especially evident on oriental rugs that are tightly woven, and the cotton foundation fibers tighten up when wet. (Think about your clothes when you take them out of the washer. Your cotton items are smaller and tighter, and your wool items are looser and stretchy. Most woven rugs are wool face fibers twisted around cotton foundation warps and wefts, so “wet” they can create some buckling that will go away when dry.)

Side curls on this damp Sarouk rug that is drying face down.

Leather or vinyl strips are sometimes sewn along the sides to help keep them flat on the floor.

If a hand woven wool rug is perfectly flat when dry, but curls when it is wet, then it will regain it’s proper shape when dry. Don’t panic.

An exception is Navajo and other American Indian weavings. Often the outside wrapping threads are not pre-washed before being used in the final weaving, and these strands may shrink a bit during cleaning, which can give the illusion that the overall rug has shrunk, when it is in reality just the outside cords.

Navajo rug from a flood, the outside cords have shrunk creating a buckling of the rug.

On the very first cleaning of a Navajo rug, the outside cord will need to be adjusted to make up for the shrinking of the cords, and future washes will not be a problem as far as buckling. (There are other concerns when handling American Indian textiles, from potential dye migration to wool fuzzing, that require an expert’s touch when cleaning. These rugs can be quite valuable, so always seek out someone with expertise in handling these pieces, as well as any investment textile or rug.)

Floods and Extraction Equipment

When rugs are exposed to flood water for extended periods of time, buckling can result from the absorption of the water in the cotton foundation fibers. In most cases, this buckling will be correctable. Though you need to follow the right steps to make sure you thoroughly clean and decontaminate any rugs exposed to flood waters.  Click here => for tips on handling rugs from floods.

Heavy extraction equipment (Rover and Xtreme Extractor) though excellent at pulling out the water, can sometimes create some buckling on looser woven rugs that may or may not be correctable. Whether it’s this type of equipment, or other extracting wands, it is better on the rug to extract from the BACK of the rug to try to avoid any marks or buckles from equipment. When using a wand it can help to have someone stand on the edge you are extracting to help hold the rug flat while doing the work.

Most rug cleaning facilities have roller or spinner wringers to remove water, which removes the buckling risk. Especially with the rollers, which tend to flatten out the rug smoothly for the drying process. But if extraction is your water removal method, you just want to make sure you are not too aggressive in this step.

Buckling in field of a rug from extracting.

Hanging Rugs To Dry

There are a couple negatives to hanging rugs up to dry if you do not have a professional climate controlled drying tower like the large rug washing plants have.

Hanging up a rather wet rug can bleed the dyes into the fringe. It can also create browning and discoloring of the fringe.

It can also, from the weight of the water, create a creasing of the rug that is difficult to remove, especially if the rug is tufted.

Some ways to lessen the risks are to try to get as much water out of the rug before hanging. If you do not have large water removal equipment, you can use a Water Claw in addition to your portable or truck mount wand to boost your extracting. The Rover, with its teflon head is excellent at removing water from heftier rugs without leaving any marks (even if you have to extract from the front side). Just make sure the rug is not too fragile.

Instead of hanging rugs on narrow planks, you can place a PVC pipe around the planks so that you can have it curved enough to help prevent creasing. You can also hang the rugs at at angle so there will not be a clean line of where the rug was bent to hang, like this:

Hang rugs at an angel to lessen potential creasing.

We dry our rugs out flat to avoid these risks, but most rug cleaning companies do not have the space to do this. So this helps if you have a mini-rack system that you are using.

* * *

These are the most common reasons behind rug buckling, and the situations where something can be done about it… or can’t.

Happy rug cleaning!

Lisa

P.S. I’m super excited because I’m finally ready to announce my return to the “rug training circuit” with a program that will be the best educational experience in our industry for crafting experts in the field of rug care. If you love rugs, and want to learn directly from me, then make sure I have your name on my Rug Chick list by entering your name and email in the “Rug Disasters Report Request” box up in the top right corner of this website. I’ll be picking a small number of companies in the coming weeks from my list to work with this year, so if you are interested in getting serious about rug cleaning, plug your name in up top! =)

Rugs are loosely lumped into two general categories – “tribal” rugs or “city” rugs.

City rugs come from “bigger” weaving operations that tend to produce rugs with more intricate designs, higher knot counts, and tighter quality control. This is a broad generalization of course.

Tribal rugs come from smaller operations, or nomadic weavers who weave as they travel. They tend to have designs that are a bit cruder, with sharper edges instead of curvilinear designs. (FYI – in a future post I will explain why you see this curvilinear versus geometric difference, it’s related to the warp and weft construction and knot type.)

I’ve seen many beautiful “city” rugs in my lifetime…

Beautiful silk "city" production rug.

…elaborate designs, vivid colors, and a fine weave that makes them almost perfectly symmetrical.

Very finely woven Turkish Hereke silk rug.

Though I have a real appreciation for the “city design” pieces…

…when it comes right down to it, I like the tribal pieces more!

They are cruder at times, usually utilizing weaving techniques that make them have more of an “etch-a-sketch” type design than the beautiful floral illustrations shown up above…

…but I like the more geometric – and strong – style.

Great old Kazak (woven in Caucasus Mountain region)

I just love the tribal design pieces. To me they have more “character” and personality. If they are made with natural (“vegetal”) dyes they are very vibrant, with a lot of texture and depth to their look. And the older ones have such a fantastic luster to them.

I mean, just LOOK at this incredible piece here:

Gorgeous old Afshar rug.

Whether they are rugs from the Caucasus region, the Persian tribal weaving regions, the Baluchi tribal pieces, the Tibetan and Nepalese pieces, or even American Indian weavings – I am drawn to these typically smaller, cruder, but much more “energetic and alive” (to me) textiles.

I really feel like these are a piece of someone’s life – and heart – that now has become part of my life. Old textiles become new friends of those who love rugs.

That said – just like with “real” friends – there are some “personality quirks” that can come along for the ride.

“Oh your rug has a GREAT personality!” (aka the “quirks” are charming…)

Quirks, which in newer rugs – in particular coming from Afghanistan – can result in some trade-off’s that might unsettle those who are looking for a perfectly designed rug.

This is especially due to two factors in that region, one being the war’s impact on resources and consistent commerce, and another being their “tradition” of weaving wool on wool rugs (versus wool woven on a cotton foundation).

Of course, before cotton became “king” wool rugs were all woven on wool warps and wefts. The use of cotton allowed for the creation of larger, flatter, more symmetrical rugs because the cotton can be spun into smoother stronger strands for use as warps and wefts versus wool which when spun has more variation in thick and thin areas.

Hand spun Merino wool varies in thickness.

Wool is an exceptional fiber, in fact, the best rugs to buy today are wool rugs, in my opinion. They are super durable, can be vibrantly dyed, are naturally fire-resistant, and are the truly renewable resource (grows back year after year on sheep).

Where the wool face fibers can be sheared to create an evenly piled rug, when you are using wool as the warps and wefts of a rug – the “skeleton” of the rug – there are “quirks” that come about in the form of unevenness, buckling, creases, and sometimes shrinking if the wool had not been thoroughly washed and scoured before being spun.

In the industrialized countries wool processing and scouring is a serious operation, which cannot be duplicated as consistently and “aggressively” in tribal areas…

…especially war-torn tribal areas like Afghanistan.

So the trade-off for an authentic tribal piece from this region will be some quirks like these:

An uneven shape. Perfectly symmetrical is NOT an option.

On smaller rugs, the tribal characteristics are “cute.” If the rug is a few inches wider along one end than the other, it’s not a big deal. But when LARGER rugs are woven with that same varying tension and technique, the “quirks” can become more of a distraction than charming.

Creases in the weave seen on the back. This can make the top side have small "waves."

Uneven tension along the end created a big buckling problem.

Also due to the lack of the aggressive rinsing/scouring you can see an additional “quirk” of excess dye in the wool that can migrate (“bleed”) when the rug gets wet.

Afghan rug in a flood - red bled into the fringe.

Dye test shows this rug is not colorfast. A tricky wash that requires a rug pro.

Some buyers of tribal rugs want to make them “perfect” – but that is not unlike being born with one foot a bit bigger than the other (we all have one!) and expecting someone to “fix” that for you.

The variations with your friends, from size to freckles to goofy smile, is what give them their unique – and PERFECT – personality.

It’s not different with rugs. The tribal ones have more “character.” And just as with people, it is REALLY hard to “change” who you are.  It’s equally very difficult to undo the natural characteristics of rugs.

An attempt to STRETCH an uneven Afghan rug more flat.

Aggressively trying to "undo" weaving flaws that made the rug buckle.

Afghan Tribal Rugs: What to remember.

When looking at Afghan rugs, whether to inspect for cleaning, or to inspect for buying, just a few things to remember.

- Any visible “quirks” – such as buckling, creasing, curling – will become more prominent with its first cleaning. (If the rug has been washed in the past, then this will not be a problem if the rug cleaner is properly trained.)

- Any strong dye migration that transfers with the dye test means that the wool used in the production was not thoroughly washed prior to production, so if the rug is woven on wool warps and wefts, you need to expect more unevenness due to stretching or shrinking over time. If it’s a small rug you may not notice, because the tension will be fairly even. But larger pieces, having used multiple weavers over a much longer time, may result in a rug that is not as smooth to the floor as you’d like (if you are purchasing).

Afghan rug weaving project for women.

There are some beautiful rugs coming out of Afghanistan today. A few are highlighted on Emmett Eiland’s website on contemporary rugs. There are also several important weaving projects in the region empowering locals with a livelihood that I personally like to support.

But just as when a friend gives you some pottery she has made for you, and it’s not perfect, but you love it anyway – I look past any of the quirks in anything hand crafted that I get to have come into my life.

I’m not suggesting that all Afghan tribal rugs have some of these extreme “quirks” I have shown in this post’s photos. What I am saying is that ALL OF THEM will have variations in shape and size. Without a doubt, none will be perfectly rectangular, and none will lay perfectly flat on the floor.

The weaving of wool on wool will make these particular pieces prone to buckling, creasing, and more so when initially cleaned. Most times this will be very slight. The severe times will be evident at the time of purchase. You will see warning signs beforehand. None of these examples I shared here were “problems” that creeped up over time. The flaws were evident to begin with to a trained eye.

If you have a keen eye – as a buyer or a cleaner – you can avoid being surprised by inspecting the front and back sides carefully.

And if you are an owner of an Afghan rug, make sure you use a professional for the cleaning, because a D-I-Y cleaning on new tribal rugs might make your new purchase a ruined one if you are not careful.

I do not expect tribal rugs to be perfect. That’s what makes them “perfect” to me.  I like quirks!

- Lisa

P.S. With the holidays coming, make sure you know what to do when an unexpected spill happens. Print out the Holiday Rug Care Tips to have handy! (Merry Christmas!)

The most common repair needed by rugs in our town (and EVERY town with rug owners) is END repairs.

With hand woven rugs, when the fringe is torn or worn, the knots of the rug start to slide away and off.

You rug starts slowly shrinking, and gets shorter and shorter.  Like this:

This end is unraveling and losing its wool knots (back side view).

Once a knot has pulled loose, you cannot resecure it… it is lost FOREVER.

That’s why when your fringe gets VERY short, you need to pay attention.

The value of your rug is in those tiny little knots. You want to keep them in tact. But sometimes when you try to do good and grab some wool and thread, you might actually cause more damage than good.

Fringe is too short on this rug, this repair won't hold.

This rug has fringe that is way too short, and you can see someone’s attempt to tie off the tassels is actually sliding off, and pulling some knots with it.  Too little too late.

An attempt at darning the edge is doing nothing to secure this rug.

Another attempt at trying to use a whip stitch to darn this end is doing no good either. By pulling that thick wool through the foundation to try to hold the edge together, the person has actually loosened those rows of knots and this edge will pull apart sooner as a result.

Good intentions, bad results.

Sometimes you take your rug to someone who decides that using an industrial serging machine to machine repair the edge is a good option. This also is a very BAD choice.

Do not machine repair a hand woven rug. It damages the rug, and it's ugly.

This is heartbreaking… a sewing machine happy idiot decided to machine repair a hand woven rug. Not only is the color choice ugly, but this type of machine work causes structural damage to the rug that cannot be reversed.

The reason hand woven rugs are repaired by hand is so that the Rug Repair Specialist can slip the needle around, and inbetween the foundation fibers (warps and wefts).

A serging machine does not go around fibers – it powers right through them, over and over and over again.

Over time these repairs will tear away, and pull away inches of the rug that could have been saved if it had been repaired by hand.

If you are talking about an investment textile, the more inches you lose, the more value you lose. Simple as that.

When this machine repair tears away, the rug will need to be reduced further to provide enough warp length to anchor a solid repair with. (Remember those VERY short fringe tassel stubs up top in photo #2? You need more length than that to hold a good end repair in place.)

What does a good end repair look like? There are several styles, but this is my favorite – an overcast stitch:

Properly executed end repair overcast stitch. Strong and long lasting.

Your stitch should use a strong upholstery thread that will not get brittle over time. Your stitch should vary now and then to lower weft threads so that the tension of the stitch is evenly distributed so it will not unnecessarily pull the edge loose.  Your buttonhole stitch, flat along the top, should be close to the outermost weft thread to hold the edge tightly in place.

Many rug repair facilities, like ours, guarantee their overcast repairs for the life of the rug. This is because, when it is done properly, it should never need to be done again.

Now… if your vacuum cleaner sucks up and tears off the edge, that is a different matter. There are no guarantees to help someone not paying attention.

If you have a hand woven rug, and the edge is unraveling, make sure the repair is done by hand.

If you have a rug cleaning facility, and want to know some rug repairs that you can do without having to be trained by a rug repair specialist, be sure to opt-in for the Simple Rug Repairs Report I’ve made available. The opt-in box is at the top of this blog, over to the right. Enjoy!

- Lisa

Most women have at sometime in their childhood tried a little needlepoint. (Perhaps some men also, but I can only speak for the “girls” I know right now.)

You have a little round frame that segments and holds tight a section taut of the cotton mesh (with a design imprinted on it) so you can do a series of stitches. It is almost color-by-numbers, where you use wool to stitch your little piece of art.

If you remember, it did not lay perfectly flat when you were done. Most of the times you made it into a pillow to help smooth this unevenness out.  Or perhaps you framed it.  If it was small this might not have been very noticeable, but as you tackled larger pieces it was trickier to keep the tension even in your stitching. A natural characteristic of a hand made product, the tension is never even.

There are needlepoint rugs on the market. Some quite large. Some done by hand, and some by machine, and they bring with it their own unique characteristics and a few “challenges.” 

Needlepoint rug from China

This is a typical new needlepoint rug. Attractive design. Nice colors.

Do you notice though, that it is a little uneven along the edges? That if you were to lay it out and measure it, that there would be some differences in the width and length?

Let’s take a closer look:

Front corner of the needlepoint rug.

Back corner of the same rug.

See along the edges of this rug, that even before its very first wash, when it is BRAND new, there is some buckling along the edges.  Just like with your little needlepoint pillow way back when.

Can you also see the stitching, and how there needs to be some colors tied off, and some areas doubled-over, so that it does not give the rug a completely smooth back?

Characteristics like these lead to a couple must-knows about needlepoints.

They are rarely perfectly stragith or symmetrical.

They rarely lay flat on a floor.

They are easy to kick up the edges if they are over wall-to-wall carpet.

They are easy to slide on if they are on a hard floor.

If you are cleaning them – there is a danger of some buckling of the cotton or synthetic mesh if you are not careful on its first cleaning. (If you are a professional rug cleaner with a facility, you have two options here: 1) Give the rug a bath and tack it out on a stretching floor during the dry time, or 2) tack the rug onto a floor BEFORE cleaning and clean it with a hand tool as you would tricky upholstery.)

Though I have seen some gorgeous needlepoint rugs in my lifetime, I tend to prefer these and tapestries up on a wall displayed rather than on the floor. And because of the thin structure of these rugs, laying them over wall-to-wall carpeting and placing any furniture on top of them would be a rug DISASTER. You will tear the foundation over time, as rugs are meant to be on hard floors, and with a solid pad underneath them.

When hanging rugs, I prefer having a strip of velcro attached to the back BY HAND … I’ll post some photos of this in my next blog post so you can see what I mean exactly.

If you own some great needlepoint rugs, or tapestries, you could consider putting them on display on your walls. (If you have some great old rugs, but also have some great old dogs in your home, you can save your rugs by mounting them on the walls also – nothing damages rugs more than pet urine.)

Just a few pointers on needlepoints, hope they help!

- Lisa

Rugs do shrink.  Some slight – a fraction of an inch … some a lot – inches. Usually on their very first wash IF they have not been washed after being woven (good rug manufacturers generally wash their rugs after weaving is done).

How much will they shrink? This depends.  You have to think about it as you would brand new clothing, that first wash will make it a bit smaller, but if you do a gentle cool clean, and easy dry, it’s less shrinking than if you hot water and hot dry the piece.

But with a woven rug, any shrinking will be slight.  (FYI – a WOVEN rug is a rug that you can see the design on the back that matches the front.)

There is an exception to the “slight” rule though … and this is tribal rugs woven on a WOOL foundation, and in particular Afghan wool on wool rugs.  Like this:

Corner of an Afghan rug - wool knots wrapped around wool foundation.

With this rug, the wool face fibers are wrapped around wool warps and wefts as opposed to cotton warps and wefts.

Cotton is generally the foundation fiber of choice, because it provides a consistent twist throughout, and helps create a rug that will lay flatter in the floor.  Wool, has a lot of give to it.  Just think of  a wool sweater, and how you can stretch it when you need to, or it can sometimes shrink up a bit.  It does not keep it’s consistent shape as cotton would when laid out wet to dry.

Because of the war-torn conditions of Afghanistan, for decades there have been rugs not necessarily created under ideal quality control conditions. And this can lead to some of the rug product in contemporary Afghanistan to shrink more than would be deemed acceptable.

I actually had the owner of an Afghan restaurant try to convince me that washing a rug should never happen because it damages rugs. I had to correct him that rugs properly woven with quality fibers, dyes, and construction can be washed throughout its 100 or more years and not have damage from cleaning. (Honestly, NOT cleaning it and leaving abrasive dirt in the fibers will cut the face fibers and cause more damage that way. Cleaning is the best thing you can do for your rug because it removes this grit.)

With some Afghani rugs, however, a wash can mean a release of dyes not properly rinsed before being woven into a rug, and it can mean some buckling and shrinking or stretching of wool fibers with different tensions and twists.

Luckily for you, the worst of the possible dangerous rugs to clean from this region will show you warning signs. Sometimes slight, like this one where the edges and ends show definite variations in width and length:

Rug is NOT symmetrical - wavy along all edges.

Sometimes the warning signs are so strong – you need to make the decision to only surface clean the rug because immersing it in a bath will risk making the rug shape even worse.  This rug is an enormous “don’t wash me” sign:

End is buckled from a poorly executed weave, and it will get worse with a wash.

With rugs like these, you do need to get a release of liability if the owner insists on having it cleaned. Photo documentation that this rug was NEVER perfectly square, and never laid flat on the floor, would also be helpful.

Sometimes these rugs can be stretched to a certain extent on a stretching floor to help loosen up the shape.  You can also tack out the rug and clean with a hand tool so that you can control the potential of shrinking.  However, these problems are WEAVING characteristics and not the result of improper cleaning.  There is literally only so much you can do.  You cannot undo a bad weave, or inconsistent tension.  All you can do is try to control the shape so that it does not become worse when cleaning.

The key here is to closely inspect the rug, and catch the warning signs BEFORE you clean the rug. Point out the characteristics of the rug to the client.  (Everyone repeat after me!) When it is communicated before the wash, it is EDUCATION – when it is communicated after the wash, it is an EXCUSE.

Rugs from contemporary Afghanistan can be a wash challenge.  Just keep an eye out for the signs.

- Lisa