Our Little Blacksmith!

Let's first indulge in my personal image of blacksmithing. Gorgeous ripped fellow working over an anvil doing super huge movements hammering something metal like with a large fire in the background ... yes. Either that or an elf re-forging Narsil into Anduril. That's a good scene too. Therefore, you can imagine how I may have set myself for some disappointment when the Blacksmith Festival was discovered in Spruce Pine, NC. Despite the fact that the real blacksmiths really don't look any different than anybody else, I was completely enamoured with seeing the real tools and all the demonstrations. It was like stepping back in time a bit, possibly Old American West visions. Being next to a train track that had actual train traffic added to that motif.

I suppose the real confusion for me was that I anticipated the crowd would be people like me .... aware of forges only as a result of movie watching. However, in reality, they were all local farmers coming into town for tips from master forgers. Demonstrations had farmers in their bibbed overalls watching closely and asking questions. Do these people have forges in their barns or something??? However, it does seem reasonable for the small farmer, which Western North Carolina is well known to have in abundance. Years of avoiding "back of the truck options" because one would assume drugs are being sold (city raising) were replaced with a variety of steel and iron rods being hocked.

While trying to deal with my cross section of incorrect assumptions and reality, Ellie found her opportunity to enter her own world of blacksmithing. Deciding that she was already an expertise in Minecraft blacksmithing, she felt that she would simply rock out real blacksmithing.

Getting ready! Was really cuted out by the kid sized work gloves and hammer :)

The end product!