callen, if you assume that one can earn a living doing blacksmith work without as much as a single xp in Craft:Blacksmith (or some supernatural assistance that effectively replaces that knowledge), you are playing a different game than I am; so I am afraid there's not much else to be said here. I hope I made my point abundantly clear - most people on this thread seem to have understood it, even though some may disagree.
I think this issue has derailed this thread enough as it is, so let me leave it at that (though I have openened a new thread clearly devoted solely to this issue).
I'll just add that the notion that asterisked abilities must be known to be used at all, and non-asterisked ones can always be used even without a single xp in them, is meant as a rough guideline, because the "asterisk" is a single bit of information that fails to capture the whole complexity of an Ability. The average character in Mythic Europe will know what a mass is, even without any xp in the appropriate asterisked Lore (Dominion Lore, or Area Lore, or whatever). On the other hand, if you've never received any instruction as a smith, a sufficient Perception may allow you to sense whether a certain knife is good or bad; but you won't be able to forge a decent knife unassisted no matter how strong or smart you are. It's really that simple.