a trip to the museum

While in Denver this week visiting my daughter, I was introduced to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.

The museum has a really nice permanent gem and mineral collection with Colorado rocks as well all kinds of other stuff. I was intrigued with the rhodocrosite that is native to the state. Lusting after is probably a more accurate description I think...

This is a huge rock, and the first thing that greets you when you enter the exhibit. Below is a photo from the museum website to show you the scale of these crystals!

I really wanted a specimen to take home with me and thought I might find one in the gift shop, but no. Apparently these beautiful native crystals from the Sweet Home mine are really pretty rare and expensive. Darn!

 the middle photo shows the rhodocrosite along side florite.

Aquamarine is the state gemstone of Colorado... and my birthstone : ) I'd take this specimen any day!

There was crystalized gold and rocks with wide veins of silver running through them...

silver veins

of course, I can't resist the jaspers...


The following day we visited a rock shop where I made a few purchases that helped me get over the fact that I couldn't take any of the museum exhibits home with me.

No rhodocrosite specimen, but I'm not complaining!

a new fossil... and 4 more brooches

I had a nice drive out into the country this morning on a picture perfect Fall day. My goal, to pick up the rock slabs my stone cutting friend Greta had cut for me from some of the rough I had picked up during last month's rock hounding expedition. She has an awesome rock saw that can cut through the big chunks.

While I was there waiting on the last cut I, of course, started poking my nose into all her boxes of rocks. You wouldn't believe how much stuff that is...

I saw this slab of fossil fern wood and asked if she'd sell it to me. Lovely Greta, I'm sure she realized that she has about 3 lifetimes worth of rock to work with so into my goodie bag it went... I never leave Greta's without many things I had no idea I needed until I saw them...

The thing that really caught my eye were the layers along the edge. A lovely blush along with taupe, a darker stripe, and cream. I can see a few pair of drop earrings as well as some very cool cufflinks in that edge.

Something not noticeable in the photos, is that in all of those voids, there's the sparkle of tiny druzy quartz crystals. I'm really looking forward to cutting into this!

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And since it's been a month since my last post, here are the four latest brooches in the etsymetal brooch a week challenge.

Brooch #38

A beauty of a lace agate, semi transparent so you can see into it and the botryoidal formation, those very organic looking globular forms. I've designed it so that it can been worn as a pendant as well as a brooch.

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Brooch #39

This is a piece of ocean jasper with a small pinkish rhodolite garnet.

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Brooch #40 

I think this one can hardly be called a brooch, more of a pin, it's a teeny little thing, 

and is a piece of Picasso jasper.

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Last week's brooch, #41

 is a large piece of mookaite from Australia, paired with a little yellow citrine.

Right now I'm working on this week's design, but I'm not quite sure how it's going to all come together yet, so I won't say more... not yet

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.