Jaci Dawn

I paid for rocks today. It’s a crazy thing to do when you already have more rocks than you know what to do with, but there you go: I bought a bucket of rocks and paid for a couple rocks that have already been polished.

In my defense, I have a couple little projects that I couldn’t complete with the rocks I have in my own, personal, free collection. Nothing I own (or that my husband owns, which I own by default) quite fit the ends of a couple of “magic wands” I want to make, so I had to go out and find rocks that fit the wood.

And there’s the issue of the broken dragon I bought at Goodwill that I wanted to try to see if I could fix.

So when I got an email a couple weeks ago reminding me that this weekend is the Clackamette Gem and Mineral Show, I marked it on my calendar and notified my husband that I wanted to go. Not that he wouldn’t want to go, mind you: we’ve gone every year for probably 20+ years. We dragged our children to the rock and gem shows (great science class for homeschoolers: all about geology and rocks). There’s a black light show (some minerals glow in the dark or under black lights); plenty of rocks to bid on; a gi-hugic rock that you guess the weight of (and hope to win); plenty of beads, rocks, gems, and fossils to buy; and display cases of rock collections to vote on (Rock Club Member, Guest and Junior categories). Polished rocks, raw rocks, buckets of rocks, carved rocks. Rocks that sell for $3500.00 and rocks that sell for $0.25. Quartzite, moss agate, jade, crystals, picture rock, various kinds of obsidian, geodes, mica, coral, petrified wood, fossils.

I was looking specifically for a couple spheres and something to fit in to a larger grasp, like a moss agate or a quartz crystal.

I found a number of spheres, but they were a lot more money than I wanted to pay considering the piece of wood I wanted to attach them to was free and I am not sure how the project will look in the end. I do want to be able to sell my project(s) for more than they cost me to make.

I spent $4 on a bucket of rocks, $5.00 on a couple polished rocks that could work as substitutes of spheres, $2.00 on a lovely pink amethyst crystal, and too much on a sphere that I hoped would work with the above-mentioned dragon. I bid on a nice large quartz crystal, but someone out-bid me at the last moment. That’s how rock hounds are.

So here’s my haul:

I wish I was nerdy enough to tell you what all those rocks are, besides being the left-overs from a real rock hound’s collection. But I have forgotten nearly everything I ever knew about rocks: I just know what is pretty and what isn’t, and what is quartz or agate or obsidian. Looks like I need to invest in a good field guide and start teaching myself about rocks, doesn’t it?

I bought the bucket because I thought thas piece of moss agate would work well with the one magic wand/faerie staff.

It does fit. I could work with that.

But this fits, too. Amethyst crystals. I won this item in a bid.

This piece of moss agate was in the bucket. It could work, too. I don’t think the photo does it justice.

The sphere was too large for the dragon. The dragon had a broken horn, but you can’t tell because I glues a fake one on. It’s still broken and very fragile, however – a failure at fixing the dragon if I ever try to move it much. BUT – I found a small piece of quartz crystals in the bucket that fit just perfectly in his claws.

Not so much of a fail. Maybe this will work after all.

I have no idea what stone/gem this is, but the darn thing cost me more than I want to admit. It’s pretty.

And it does work in the smaller of the two magic wands/staffs that I am working on.

But so does this polished agate. I have some decisions to make.

One of the keys to looking at rocks is this: how does it appear wet? You know how it goes: you’re down on the beach, looking for pretty agates and seashells and you pocket all the ones you find. When you get home and dump out your pockets, the agates have dried and they are no longer as pretty as they were when you first saw them. You wonder why you ever picked them up.

That’s a nice piece of obsidian, by the way.

What is ordinary takes on a new beauty with the addition of water. It gives the serious rock hound an idea of what a gemstone or rock might look like, tumbled and polished.

I told my husband we need a rock tumbler and polisher.

He laughed at me.

I did not purchase this rock. I just added it to this blog because I am hoping someone will see and and will say, “I know what that is!!”

I picked it up in a mountain stream in the Oregon Cascades. I am certain it is fossils embedded in the quartz, but what fossils? What are those round things??

I don’t think they are cross-cuts of twigs because they do not appear to go straight through the quartz. But I could be wrong.

It’s a rather fascinating rock.

But I think most rocks are fascinating.