and she's back!

Hello world! After two weeks of running around, working my butt off both in the iron studio and in the dish room, getting to reconnect with old friends and meeting interesting new people, and not getting enough sleep, I'm back from Penland with some new blacksmithing skills and a definite need for a vacation. Sadly, the time I spent down there was the entirety of the two weeks vacation that I get for the year, but as exhausting as it was, it was also tons of fun and definitely worth it. Here are some of my pictures from both the Penland campus and the surrounding area, which should give all of you an idea of what a beautiful place the mountains of North Carolina are. I was fortunate enough that we had pretty beautiful weather the entire time I was there, with lots of sunshine during the day and cool nights.

The Craft House, which is where the girl's dorm for work study students is located, has one of the best porches I've ever seen. I love sitting out in the rocking chairs and taking in the beautiful view, which you can see below.

The walkway in front of the office leading up to the metals and clay studios is filled with flowers and this funky wall. You can see a detail of it below.

Some of the many flower beds around the campus. North Carolina has an amazing variety of wild flowers, so between the ones that you see on the side of the road and the beautiful gardens and flower beds that the school had planted, there's a lot of color around.

Old, overgrown train tracks that you have to walk down to get to the river to go swimming.

The view inside my instructor, Nathan Blank's, home studio. You can see one of his unfinished sculptures outside.

Blue flowers in front of an old wagon.

Tomorrow I'll post some iron related pictures: of the studio, my instructor's work and some of the things I made.