Something people forget but the author did not is that blacksmith's often had multiple anvils, often of various sizes. They can be very small or very large - several hundred pounds would not be uncommon, that obviously is of little use to a traveling smith, something closer to a hundred pounds is prefered. As for his tools, keep in mind that he's not likely to be doing much precision work. If someone asks me what my best tools are, I'm going to point at a lot of specific and heavy items on my wall, not the compact toolkit I keep in my car or the multitool or knife I often put on my belt. A lot of his tools are probably not necessary, or give a nice advantage that isn't worth the weight when mobile. A lot of craftsmen had journeymen phases, traveling about looking for a place to set up permenant shop and doing jobs in the process, they tend to have smaller, cheaper, more mobile tools from then, then go on to get high-quality and more specialized items once they have a place of their own.

Now, as for the sword handle, he's given someone who is not a smith advice on how to convert farm intruments into weapons, most knives don't have metal hilts because forging one long blade then forging a hilt and sticking them together is precision work, even for crappy swords, forging a blade of low quality and riveting it into a wooden handle isn't too hard, you just punch two or three holes into the end of the blade, the tang, and rivet it in between two pieces of wood, then glue it, wrap it with cord, whatever.

His wife probably could have packed the pots, but then she might well have guessed her husband would try to talk Thulan into coming, in which case better to leave them behind, if not, then they would hardly be inconvenienced by going and getting them. Most people heading off to warzones don't send their personal possessions to people, they leave a note, or will, about what to do with the stuff if they don't come back from it.

Add to all of it, what a strange situation this is, basically the equivalent of the End of Days or Ragnarok etc, people aren't exactly behaving with vasts amounts of cool logic and reason.