There’s art in them thar hills.

Holy smokey mountains, craft woman! I’ve a feeling this blog may soon become part travelogue; I just returned with fifty new reasons to go back to North Carolina.

Saturday morning, I finally had the bum tire replaced. While we were at the service station I asked them to put some wiper blades on. Yeah, I didn’t have wiper-wiper blades; what of it? Boy, was I glad they were brand spankin’ new for this trip!

By the interwebs, I figured it would take us about 4-1/2 hours to get to Penland. Wrong. My speedometer doesn’t work, so I go slower than the other traffic… and (oh, haha!) I didn’t realize Penland is slightly over 50 miles north of Asheville, which is the city on which I based my transit-time. 50 miles of unfamiliar, winding, windy, rainy road. Seven hours after leaving Charleston, we were there.

We were trying to make the small window of 1-5 pm for Penland School of Craft’s annual open house. Annual. As in once a year. When 3 o’clock passed and we were still farting around the Asheville area, my chest grew tight.

We did finally make it, but not until four pm. Already resigned to the notion that we wouldn’t be able to try every single studio activity, we rushed first to the woodworking studio, where I hoped like hell they’d still have a birdhouse for the Corn Puppy to make. They had two pre-cut kits left. The Corn Puppy watched Pat hammer a house together and we brought the other kit back with us to make at home.

That ended up taking a large chunk of our available time. We bypassed the forge (which I would really have loved to see) in order to make it down to the letterpress, where we’d hopefully get to print and fold a small book. No dice there. They were already cleaning.

“Nope, sorry. We closed up at five.”

Oh, how heavily those words fell on my already throbbing head. I actually heard the distinctive clink of steel, locking out any and all possibilities.

I took the girls and started jogging… anywhere I could; I didn’t know what was open. By now the tears of frustration had broken out; my cheeks were hot. The photography studio was closed. The papermaking studio was closed. The metals studio was closed. Someone pointed us toward the clay studio.

They were also cleaning up, but they were more than willing to send us on our way with four balls of clay and a bunch of beads for the girls:

At this point we were done. I didn’t expect any more. I figured we’d find a room somewhere, hole up and find something fun to do on Sunday. But, wait… Sunday… what’s open then? Groan.

We asked the kind clay lady to point us to the bathroom. On the way there:


The bathroom was in the same building as the textiles studio. We decided to have a look; sure enough there were rows of hand looms, warped and ready for working. I asked a young woman tidying up if she knew of any yarn stores in Burnsville or even Asheville that might be open on Sunday. She knew of a store in Burnsville, but not whether it would be open. As the girls and I turned to go, she said “Oh! Wait. You know, we just had a whole bunch of yarn donated; why don’t you take a box of it?”

Wow! Are you kidding?! That was just about the coolest gesture ever. Here’s the bounty (there’s fabric in them thar cones):

I picked up every brochure I could get my hands on: every one describing the arts and crafts of the area, the coming events, the galleries, festivals and guilds.

We left that foggy mountaintop village to find lodging for the night in Mars Hill before driving back this morning.

(Can you tell the girls don’t watch too much television at home?)

What can I say? I love to travel, so no trip is ever wasted as far as I’m concerned. The girls had fun running around. We’ll definitely be back. Just… next time, I’ll have a more realistic time slot set aside.