more temptation

There was another mineral and gem show at the Canby fairgrounds this weekend...

My friend Linley and I moseyed on over. Well, Linley moseyed, I approached with long, purposeful strides, my antennae twitching...

The first thing we spotted, was a table about 15 feet long FILLED with hand cut beads. There were gemstone beads, jaspers and agates, just about every cool stone in the world cut into beads. About a bazilloion of them at least... and this was day 2 of the show. What must day 1 have looked like??

Each and every bead was cut, shaped, drilled and polished by a very nice retired gentleman who obviously delights in his work! Not cheap, but definitely worth every penny. 

I chose Hidden valley jasper, bird's eye rhyolite, Morrisonite, holley blue agate, Montana agate.

I have no idea at the moment what I'll do with them, maybe just keep them around as playthings...

I found some really nice Montana agate cabs...

 

...and some Cherry Creek jasper. the top stone is already in process of becoming this week's brooch.

In an earlier post about my trip to central Oregon to dig for polkadot jasper, I mentioned that thousands of years ago the area drew Native Americans who used the jasper for tool making. To remove the material, they would build hot fires next to the rock to cause it to split off. The heat caused the jasper to turn pink. This cab is a remnant of that activity. The two small pieces I found I decided to hang on to as artifacts so I was delighted to find this cab, cut by the mine owner who was also at the show selling.

Of course I also bought a few slabs to add to my collection of those from which I'll do my own cutting one of these days, but I had to share this one. An old timer told me it was fossil algae! I'm sure there are cooler things in the world... but what??

All in all, it was a very good day... as well as a business expense...

digging for rocks and just spending money...

This past weekend was a holiday so I decided to unchain myself from the bench and go have some fun... and the chance to do some rock hunting with a fellow Creative Metal Arts Guild member was just too hard to resist.

Saturday was spent driving over the mountain (Mt Hood) and into the high desert of central Oregon to a small open pit mine just outside of Madras, the Polkadot mine. And of course we were looking to score some nice polkadot jasper...

This is the mine site. It was 93 degrees that day. I don't know what the temperature was in the shade. There was no shade...

But the view was pretty gorgeous. I think that's Mt Adams on the right in the distance...

When we got there, we pulled out our chisels and hammers. I spent maybe 2 minutes trying to chip rock out of the earth and decided it would be a whole lot easier to just pick it up off the ground. Fewer chips flying around...

There are several small caves around the mine area. Hundreds of years ago, Native Americans came to this site to mine the jasper for tools. They dug these caves, and would build a fire close to the rock and when it got really hot, the rock would crack and pieces split off. The extreme heat would cause the jasper to turn pink. I found a few small pieces of pink. Carbon dating was done on the remains of a fire in one of the caves which dated it back 1200 years. So I consider my little pinks as artifacts...

Richardson Ranch was right on the way home. A rock shop with the biggest collection of rock piles I've ever seen. I bought these 2 chunks of birds eye rhyolite.

It was a long, hot day, and I was glad to get into the shower at the end of it. And to make the weekend just close to perfect, there was a gem and mineral show going on all weekend at the Canby Fairgrounds, about 10 miles from my house. Wow, I had no idea I needed more rock, I mean, I don't even have any lapidary equipment, but apparently that wasn't enough to stop me, I was there first thing the next morning...

Tiger's eye, couldn't resist. I'll cut this and leave it matte like these earrings.

On the left is holley blue agate, native to Oregon. The middle rock is gorgeous, I just can't remember what it is, and the rock on the right is Larimar, which is only found in the Dominican Republic

I bought an interesting looking end cut of bumblebee jasper because I liked the rough top. The other piece is Morrisonite, "the king of jaspers", another Oregon rock.

And brooch#26 in my etsy store  features a piece of Atlantisite. After I shot this picture, I broke this slab into 3 pieces, without meaning to...

All weekend I kept poking through my newly acquired rock collection admiring and arranging things the same way I did as a kid with my halloween candy.