There's Treasure Everywhere

A few weeks ago, I managed to cajole the family into letting me visiting a rock shop that's located near the condo I owned when I was single. It's a great store - I could easily spend hours in there admiring the fossils and minerals.

When I was a child, I had a huge rock collection, filled with pieces of iron pyrite, amethyst, rose quartz, galena, mica, obisidan, etc., etc,. etc. The father of a friend of mine was a collector and he took us out with him occasionally. I would give a lot to know where we went now - it must have been a quarry, but I was only 6 and really don't remember the details (and would you really take a couple of 6 year olds to a quarry? I don't know...). We were living in Rochester, New York at the time. If anyone has the foggiest idea where this might have been, I would love to hear from you. I had aspirations to become a geologist back then. I actually came across a paper I wrote for the third grade about ten years ago. It contained a detailed discussion of the Mohs scale (a scale for mineral hardness) and the properties of various minerals in detail that made my eyes cross. I can only wonder what my teacher must have thought of all of this. Clearly, I've forgotten much more than I know now. Sigh. This early childhood obsession may explain why I'm so committed to using semiprecious stone in my jewelry design now, though.

Anyway, I found a lot of treasure at the shop when I visited, including some really lovely slices of amethyst crystal. The top of the slice is the crystal and the bottom is banded agate. The slice is thin enough that the agate is transparent. It's the perfect size to set in a pendant. Nice, don't you think? Now if only I can figure out the best way to set this... More on this later. Hopefully.

I'm a little behind on finishing up a couple projects right now, so there probably won't be any new work to show in the next couple days. If you are interested in my thoughts on such profound topics as Mr. Potato Head, though, feel free to stop in tomorrow.

Thanks for visiting!