A trip to John C. Campbell Folk School..

If you've visited either of my shops this past week then you know I was on a little artistic retreat taking a metalsmithing workshop at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC. If you ever get the chance to go I highly recommend it! I'm already in the process of planning my next visit =). Now the question is which class to take next?!
This was literally the view from my bedroom on Monday - the first morning I woke up there.. just beautiful!

And this is where we (me and my friend Nicole) stayed for the week. It is appropiately named the "Orchard House" as it has a lovely little orchard with a variety of fruit trees right in the front yard.

And here is a little friend I made along the way. Every morning and evening on my walk to and from the dining hall this little guy would be poking his head out of his little bird house greeting everyone that came by. We had quite a few conversations - mostly consisting of me telling him how darn adorable he is. =)

And here's a few more feathered friends that were staying in a bird hotel in the yard of our Orchard House. Wonder if they were on a retreat too...

And this is me (the one w/ the lobster on her head) and my friend Nicole (whom I haven't seen since college nearly 10 years ago) being silly with a box full of funny hats we found. We had a reunion of sorts as we lost touch years ago and recently found each other via FaceBook. We were roommates and good friends but once we graduated we lost touch as she went into the Peace Corps and eventually ended up right outside of Boulder, Colorado. So we planned this little get together as we discovered we both have a passion for metalsmithing and she even has chickens too! It didn't take us long to fall right back into our friendship (or being silly together)! I have a very similar picture of the two of us back in college studying for a chemisty exam with models of cyclo-hexane on our heads. Yes we're dorks ;).

And this is the Blacksmithing studio. Everyone in that class always showed up to dinner and lunch filthy but they all seemed like they were having one of the best times too. This class is definitely on my list of things I would love to take in the future!

And this is the Woodturning studio that was right across the way from our Jewerly studio...

And these are some lovely flowers in front of the Woodturning studio... after seeing this studio and the beautiful pieces that came out of it I thought that class might interest me too...

Until I saw this! The saw mill out back. I do enough damage to myself with my little jeweler's saw. I can only imagine what I would do to myself with that thing!

And this is just a little random, old building behind our jewelry studio. If you've read my blog before you know I have this thing for old wooden buildings and this campus was full of them! Pure heaven!

This was square dancing/ contra dancing night in the Keith Hall... fun stuff!

Little hemlock cones after a rain shower...

Our finished work on our bench after a week of tolling away ;)

And our class =) Starting on the far left is Lisa, Sandie, Trish, Our instructor Molly, Deb (who also has an Etsy shop http://soulwhispers.etsy.com/ so check it out!), Molly's assitant instructor Kim, me and my friend Nicole =)

And what an appropiate way to end the week - a double rainbow! These two little treasures appeared right after a rain shower on our last day and they ended right in the parking lot because I think the Folk School is the pot of gold at the end of rainbow =).

Hope you had a great week!