Rocks - So Pretty

Sunday was a perfect day - sunshine, warm temperatures, and the Minnesota Mineral Club's annual show and sale south of the Twin Cities in Cottage Grove. We attend this show every year, it's one of the high points of our fall. Often DH brings home buckets of rocks, but this time he only brought home a couple of good sized bags. He was restrained! I was so proud of him - LOL.

Ed Opatz has some of the nicer stones for sale. We look at
everyone's booths, of course, but we always seem to leave
with some of his rocks. All of the photos in the blog today
are stones from his selection. 

I fell victim to the desire for rocks also, as I always do. I have several larger wall projects in the works waiting for enameling time or additional items to add to them before I'm ready to begin the physical work on them. One of these, "Evolution", is almost ready for me to start cutting copper and working with the kiln, except for time (I don't have any) and the fact that I found two other pieces yesterday that might be perfect to add to the piece. I'll pull my original concept sketches on Wednesday and check out whether my new additions will actually work or not.

I'm going to show a lot of photos of pretty stones interspersed with a few paragraphs, but more photos than words today, so I'm putting the rest below a cut (on LJ) for people who aren't interested in looking at pretty rocks. What - you aren't interested???? Of course you are! They're beautiful!

This was a large piece of Crazy Lace Agate. DH and I aren't great fans
of agate in general, but this piece was lovely with great layering
and color banding. 

I'm much more of a jasper fan. Here, this large slab of Picasso Jasper
looked like the skeletons of trees as seen through a window pane
in the early morning light. 

Here's another slab of Picasso Jasper. Just look at the different
colors coming out here and the landscape that it's suggesting.
Picasso is an author's and artist's dream stone. 

I bought some things to play with on my lapidary wheels - rough Larimar slabs from the Dominican Republic to shape and polish and a narrow banded piece that I can see working into "Evolution" as an end point. I also bought a highly polished piece of Labradorite that might work it's way into the ocean portion of "Evolution", or not. If not, it's an easy set or bead bezel to wear it or sell it There are many things I can use these stones for, but I bought them specifically for this project so I'm hoping to fit in a little time on Wednesday to see if they will work out conceptually or not.

I don't know if you can really see the colors in the photo, but
just below the center of this beige and maroon stone, is
a splash of turquoise and forest green. It totally enchanted
me. I don't really have a project in mind for this, so it may
become part of the lid of one of my boxes. 

The other polished slab that I couldn't resist was a companion
to the piece above. In this one, along the larger maroon lines,
small bright pieces of copper ore can be seen in some lighting.
I totally fell in love! 

I also bought two polished beige slabs (pictured above) from Ed Opatz. I always seem to find something at his booth. They weren't expensive - only $8 each - but I fell in love with the colors of the smaller one and a hidden splash of shining copper along the red pathways of the larger one. I kept trying to put one or the other one down to only buy one, but then I would pick them both up again. After more than 20 minutes of trying to leave one or the other behind, I recognized a lost cause and paid for both of them.

DH bought some rough of this green stone. I'm forgetting
the exact name of the stone right now, but it's a wonderful
color and I look forward to seeing what he'll do with it. 

Rocks aren't always smooth and polished. This one reminded
me of some of the heavily textured storm clouds we can
sometimes get in our summer months. 

A person buying this nubby stone would be buying it as a
specimen for a collection, not to rework into art or
jewelry. There is something for everyone at the rock show! 

Finally, one more look at one of my two slabs (on the left). That
splash of green shows up a bit better in this photo which
it shares with another lovely piece of Picasso Jasper. 

So this post is filled with photos of rocks I was looking at yesterday, mostly from Ed's place because he always has such lovely stone. We had a great time, then went home, discussed alignment of the steps of our castle, had a light dinner and called it an early night. All in all, it was just about a perfect Sunday and how often can we get that in mid-late October? I hope your Monday is wonderful - I'll be starting out in the pool, as usual, so I know it's going to be a great day!

Sunday Rocks!

Sunday is usually a sleep-in day and a clean house and kick back day. But yesterday, Sunday was a rock day. Twice a year the G&LW Inc show holds a wholesale only event at one of the hotels near the Mall of America and we've been attending this show every spring for almost twenty years now. This time we were ignoring any products we might purchase for the store and concentrating on rocks and fun things for ourselves. After the show we were going to go to the hospital and visit Matt for a while, finally wrapping things up with a nice dinner out. And it all worked according to plan! (That doesn't happen all of the time.)

Red Lace Agate. I just loved that orange stripe going down
the center. I want that color in the next piece I'm designing, so
had to have the stone. I'm hoping it cuts true and doesn't turn
to mud under the saw blade and polishing disks. 

I bought several very lovely slabs to cut up, polish, and use in jewelry that right now is just perched in my head. It will be fun to work with these, though. The first picture is Red Lace Agate. I'm happier with Jaspers, usually, but the color was brilliant and bright and I want that color. So into my little box it went.

Serape Jasper - the banding on this is so beautiful. I'm hoping
I can control that and get it through the process in one piece. 

The second rock was Serape Jasper - probably named after the brightly colored serapes worn in Mexico. These stripes are wonderfully delineated and I am super stoked to play with this one.

Willow Creek Jasper has wide bands, but they are
not usually this evenly distributed. It's geological time
in the palm of my hand. 

The final slab I bought was a piece of Willow Creek Jasper. I was just bowled over by these regular, almost symmetrical bands of time set down in the rock. It's just exceptional and so darned pretty!

After a few hours at the show and other fun little finds, we wandered out and headed over to the hospital to see Matt. We had a chance to spend an hour with him and Liz without their kids or other visitors. That was fun, because we actually had a chance to talk. We didn't talk about anything major - grocery shopping, using computer apps, even the rocks that we had just bought - but it was nice to spend some time together. We're trying to have at least one of us drop by to say "Hi" every day when possible. I think it's really important for him as well as for both of them to know they have people other than family that they can call upon if needed.

Chili's has good food and their Patron Margaritas are steller!
We had a great meal to cap off a fun and productive day. 

After our visit, we headed to Chili's for dinner. It was the perfect cap-off for the day - a great diner and a Patron Margarita. Yummy! Now it's off to the pool to swim off some of those calories, but it was well worth the small weight gain for a great day. Have a wonderful Monday!