Treasure Hunting

Several days ago I mentioned how plentiful and inexpensive Montana moss agate is, but these things don’t take away from the fact that this type of agate can be a beautiful stone and that it has a personality all its own.

I decided to try to capture some of the uniqueness of one particular piece of Montana moss agate in a digital drawing.  The particular specimen that the drawing was modeled on is very “earthy” looking with some gold tones in the translucent center.

Today I hope to get some photographs taken of a newer batch of ocean jasper that I recently acquired.  This latest sampling actually has some nice translucent samples as well.  Yes, even though it’s called ocean jasper, a lot of it is quite translucent like agate.  From what I have read, there was some discussion on whether to classify it as an agate or a jasper, but the name ocean jasper won out because of the orbicular patterns that are found on many of the specimens.  If you want to read up some more on this, check out this information.

I was looking through some old photographs just now and came across this one of Pete that I had taken a couple of years ago.  Although he sleeps like this all the time, this was one instant when I was able to get a decent picture of him before he realized what I was doing and set out to thwart me.

He looks pretty sweet and innocent in this picture, but don’t let that fool you.  He’s exceptionally tough and is willing to stand up to anyone in order to get his way.  That is, he’s willing to stand up to you if he knows you.  If he doesn’t know you, he’s quick to run in the kitchen, open the cabinet under the sink, and hide until he thinks it’s safe.

Oh, and I found this photograph, too, that still makes me laugh.

Several months ago when I was up near Gerlach-Empire, I noticed that the giant Shrek that had been welcoming cars to that area of the world for so long was missing.  After scanning the area a bit more, I found him in this bin.  I was told that the high winds had blown him over, but it sort of looks like he just wanted to take a nap, too.  I wonder what Pete would have done if he saw that.  

I know that most people will think that it is too early to start thinking about Christmas, and I am of that mind a bit myself.  However, for those people who give a lot of handmade gifts away at Christmas-time, this is the time when a lot of those projects have to be started or, at least, planned out.  I’m not sure of what the details of this swap would be - I guess that would depend upon if anyone is interested and how others would like to participate.  I do know that I think it’s a lot of fun to trade items that are either handmade or unique to one part of the world with other people.  On the other hand, I know that a lot of people try to steer clear of these types of things because they don’t think everyone will put in the same amount of effort.  That last part never really bothers me because I look at the whole thing as something fun to do rather than view it as some type of score-keeping endeavor.  I even enjoy just trading postcards.

So, is there any interest out there?  And, if you are interested, any ideas on how to run it?

I found myself sucked into Paint Shop Pro again, this time modifying the photo of the ametrine scepter that I posted yesterday.  I thought that if I tried drawing out the purplish tint a bit that I might see the underlying phantom markings a little clearer.  While that didn’t exactly happen, I did get an interesting representation of the surface pattern on the crystal.  

Before I attempt this again, I’m going to have to go back and take several more photographs of the crystal scepter so that I can get a more three-dimensional representation of it.  Maybe if I overlap the photos, I can combine them for some type of panorama depicting what it would look like if the crystal was “unrolled”.  

Oh the lengths I’ll go to in order to avoid getting any real work done!

Sometimes it’s amazing what you find while cleaning some of the items brought home after a collecting trip.  The photograph here is of a crystal quartz scepter found back in June at the Krystal Tips Mining claim in the Petersen Mountains in Nevada.  The claim site is right on the California border near Hallelujah Junction.  Because of this, the quartz found in that area is often referred to as Hallelujah quartz.  If you’d like to see some of the other specimens gathered there, take a look at the Krystal Tips site.

When I brought this crystal home after the dig, I knew it had some purple to it.  Although it looks a bit more rose-like in this photo, the tip of the scepter is actually a pale amethyst.  That was enough to make me love this crystal, but when I actually started cleaning it, so much more came out about it!  There’s also a lot of citrine in the specimen that I hadn’t noticed before.  I had seen the yellowish tint, but I thought that was coming from the reflection of the dirt that covered most of the scepter.  However, this week (yes, I know I’m a a slacker and should have been cleaning this a long time ago) when I actually sat down to clean the crystal with some soapy water and a toothbrush, I realized that it wasn’t the dirt causing the tint - it was a pale citrine coloring that dominated the bottom part of the scepter.  So what we actually have here is a pale ametrine scepter!

Another neat aspect of this specimen came out in the cleaning as well.  Although it’s a little hard to see in this photo, there are actually phantom markings on this scepter, too.  The term phantom is used in describing quartz when you can actually see the shadow or “ghost” of different stages of the crystal’s development within the quartz.  This markings can be caused by a variety of reasons such as minerals accumulating on the crystal during its growth.  The phantom images on this scepter would probably be a lot easier to see if the faces were polished, but I think I’m going to leave this one just the way it is.  It has a few dings and dents that tell a little bit of the story behind the long life that it’s had, but sometimes it’s the flaws in crystals that make them all the more perfect - just like with people.

I love colors. One of my huge weaknesses is that I will sit with a digital editing program and play around with colors for hours. I’m not that great at it, but I do it anyway. I got to thinking today about how pretty the colors were of the blue lace agate that I posted photos of here. So I decided to play around with the photo in Paint Shop Pro a bit.

This is the picture that I ended up with when all was said and done. It’s definitely no work of art, but I kind of like it. It plays up the colors that are present in the banded agate specimen pretty nicely, but it doesn’t really capture any of the texture. I thought about working on it some more to bring the texture qualities in and to mute some of the symmetry from the kaleidoscope look, but I figured I had played enough for one day. So I just saved the image in case I want to go back and fiddle around with it some more later.

The things that can be done with digital editing software are simply amazing. Despite the rest of the world being in love with Adobe Photoshop, I much prefer Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2. One of these days someone might convince me that more can be done with Photoshop and I might switch over, but for now, I can’t think of anything that I really want to do that can’t be handled in Paint Shop Pro.

I’m still working on cataloging agate samples.  The kinds I have in my collection are pretty varied, and they’re not even close to all the different forms in the world, or even in this country.  I suppose that is why they call it collecting though.

The photo to the left is of some plume agate from a region known as Graveyard Point in Idaho that’s just a few miles from the Oregon-Idaho border.  This batch is mostly a grayish color with with gold and white plumes, but there are a few pieces with pink plumes.  The reason it’s called plume agate is because of the feathery-like inclusions contained in the stone that look something like plumes.  These inclusions can be quite beautiful when the stone is polished.

The other picture here shows some moss agate from Montana.  It’s pretty common stuff, but still takes on some interesting shapes and colors.  Both of these batches of specimens rank a little bigger than 7 on the Mohs hardness scale.