Thursday Jun 27                                        Cloudy & cool, rainy afternoon                          Crawford Bay, BC

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The forecast for this afternoon is rain, so this morning, when the clouds parted and the sun shone, we headed in to Crawford Bay to visit the artisans. The first stop was North Woven Broom housed in an old log barn.

I mentioned that these folk made brooms for the Harry Potter movies. I was wrong. Here's the skinny:

Here are some of the brooms on offer. Really exquisite.

Next stop was Kootenay Forge...

We chatted with the two ladies who were making brooms. Quite a fascinating operation. Actually Kayla was busy packing up a broom to ship but we pestered enough that she took the time to show us how she manually stitches a broom.Notice her left hand. She wears a palm-sized "thimble" on each hand. The thimble has a big metal plate to provide the force to drive the needle through the broom. Kayla mentioned that at the end of the day, she doesn't need to visit the gym!

    

North Woven Broom has a really old sewing machine that automates stitching on the dowel-handled brooms. Apparently it is quite the scary beast when it is operation.

There wasn't much going on in the workshop but I took the picture (above) showing the furnace and some of the equipment they work with. That furnace sure looked HOT!

That was it for today. See you later.