Under the Influence of Rocks: Show and Tell

Looks like the mortuary!!

It poured with rain yesterday. We had heard it raining during the night but it had eased off by the time we were due to uncover the tables around 8.30am. There were a few people about and we made a few sales. But the clouds continued to circle ominously and from the weather images on the internet we could see more rain was coming. At times you could hardly see the mountains for streaming rain and then, sure enough, down it came and the people disappeared. So by late morning we had closed again and covered everything up. So had most other vendors.

We had banking to do and as there isn't a branch of our bank (there is only the community bank) in this town we took the opportunity to drive to Parker, 40miles away. The road reminded me of driving up north in Western Australia. You just put you foot on the accelerator and drive. Long straight roads across flat desert. On the way back we saw a 4WD upside down on the side of the road which wasn't there on the way! Emergency vehicles had been and gone. We wondered if they survived.

This morning the rain had gone away, the sun was shining and we had a big clean-up job to do. Even though we cover the tables with tarps and all but three of the tables are under the canopy, still the rain gets in. A mixture of desert dust and moisture makes for very mucky unattractive rocks.
By the time we'd finished our makeover, the tables and rocks were clean and the Tiger Iron and Tiger Eye was flashing again in the sunshine and looking spectacular.

The wetness on the ground will hopefully keep the dust down for a day or two. I must be dusting these rocks two or three times a day. We have a real feather duster, I think they are feathers straight out of the roosters tail (ouch) and it's very affective. One day I was dusting and a man asked me where my French Maid's outfit was. Very funny.

These are tumbled Mookaite pieces (below) and have sold well. Glenn sent some good solid pieces of rock to China to be made into spheres and contoured sculptures. They didn't make as many spheres as we would have liked but these pieces are beautiful and a few are coming back to Australia! For us! We can't resist them. As we pulled them out of their packaging, we priced one and hid one, priced one, hid one. This (below) is Ruby in Zoisite. Our friends across the way are selling a small amount of this. This small piece of rock was really, really heavy and expensive! It isn't top quality ruby so not good enough to be faceted as it would be cloudy but it is ruby and will be beautiful when polished. I couldn't find a link with as much clear information as I'd like so I'll leave it to you to look up. I have learned, however, that ruby is a Corundum and Corundum can be colourless, red, pink, red, black, brown, orange, yellow, green, indigo, violet, or mauve. Red corundum and most pink corundum is called ruby, all other colours are called sapphire, usually with the colour specified as a prefix to the word ruby, for example, yellow sapphire.