Saturday this week was the Townsend Artisan Guild annual picnic.  The event was held at the Metcalf Bottoms pavilion in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park about half way between Townsend and Gatlinburg.

I headed off a little early so that I could call in to some of the many antique stores on the way north that are often closed when I am traveling to and from Townsend.  Along the way I managed to pick up a couple of old rip saws – rusty but otherwise OK. They will need some cleaning, but rip saws are expensive and pretty hard to find as power tools are to most common option.

Around 40 people attended the picnic and there was a lot of activity in and around us at the many other picnic tables and a constant stream of folk heading to and from the river.  At mountain elevations the temperature was easily 10 degrees cooler than in the valley where it was in the mid to high nineties.

I also picked up the TAG Harrisville Design loom.  This is the one I have used on multiple occasions to demonstrate weaving.  They are short on storage space and don’t really have any other weavers.  I’ll look after the loom and make sure it is ready for demonstrations and also potentially set up and run some weaving classes for interested members.

The warp on the loom is the one I put on so that the Scenic Valley Handweavers could use the loom to demonstrate at the last Smoky Mountains Fiber Arts Festival.  I wove the first few stripes to give them an idea how to proceed.  I can see we’ll need some lessons on reversing twill stripes and consistent beating!!