rock

Some more recent pics of the chunk of quartz. Its inner beauty is slowly starting to come out.

The original form of a big ol' chunk of smoky quartz that I've been working on for a little while. Wanted to rescue these from my phone before they got buried in the photos library.

Finds from a grab bin: ocean jasper, carnelian agate, chevron amethyst, moss agate, mahogany obsidian, sodalite, moonstone, fossilized (???), and amazonite

Managed to buy only four pieces at this year's fairs: chocolate calcite, K2 granite, ruby in fuchsite, and lepidolite.

23 (grayish, clear with inclusions): a large piece of smoky rutile quartz

All of the tiger's eyes have also received some polishing but aren't quite finished. The bottom right piece is missing its chatoyance - not sure if it lost it in the tumbler or if it went in like that.

I've paused the tumblers for now. One of my geckos who live near the tumblers is pretty sick (she has lymphoma :/) and I've decided to keep things quiet around her so as to not add to her distress. Also, it turns out that cleaning out tumbler barrels is a huge pain in the ass during the winter when I can't use the outside faucet (since rock tumbler slurry can't go down the drain). The long and the short of it is that I may not start the tumblers up again until spring. Meanwhile I'm hand-polishing a few of the nicer quartz and tiger's eye pieces that came out of the barrels. Most need to be kicked around a bit more.

Quartz tumble update! Here's how the full batch is looking. I don't think they're quite ready for the next stage yet, so I'm throwing them back in the barrel with some fresh coarse grit, but wanted to get a shot of how they're coming along.