Saturday

This morning Glenn decided that today was the day to unveil the Tiger Eye spheres. The sun was shining and did full justice to these magnificent lumps of rock!
When making a sphere of this Brockman Tiger Eye the main aim is to have the band of Tiger Eye in the most prominent position, and as you can see, it flashes beautifully around the widest point of both these spheres.


The full name of this rock is BrockmanTiger Eye and the Brockman Jasper in which the band of Tiger Eye sits is a multitude of greens, browns and reds, incorporating the metallic-looking bands of hematite.

I am sure I have never seen anyone walk past this huge slab of Brockman Tiger Eye (below) without stopping and admiring it. Many people see pictures in it. One man looked at it and said, "Hey, this is a painting - I can see mountains, valleys, rivers, waterfalls and... wait... there's a golf course!!!

Being a weekend we have a lot of tourists and locals visit our booth who come to enjoy the sights of the Rock and Gem Show. I met some really lovely people today who had no idea what they were looking at but enjoying every minute of it. We constantly hear comments like, "You have such beautiful rocks in Australia!" and "I have never seen such an amazing assortment of rocks." Quite often they only buy a one dollar rock but it means so much to them and they are always so pleased when they see we attach a label giving the name and location of the rock they chose.

I saw a man looking very carefully through all the chrysoprase polished slabs and rocks on the tables today and went over to him to say hello. He said he was looking for a particular rock. It had to be really rough, ordinary and ugly on one side and stunningly beautiful on the other.

Chrysoprase is a beautiful green gemstone and can be cloudy through to translucent and it occurs in a brown matrix that is dusty and dirty. The photo above shows the cut and polished side revealing the gemstone inside. The other side is the original rock, as it came out of the ground, dusty and craggy.

It was the perfect type of rock for the lesson he was preparing that he may have entitled "You can't judge a book by its cover".

First he would show the children the back of this rock and ask them what they saw. They would see the dirt, the roughness, the ugliness and nothing that made it interesting or worth a second look. Then he would turn it over and they would see that there was more to this rock than met the eye. He wanted them to consider looking at people this way. They may see an unattractive, ordinary, uninteresting person who appears not to be worth a second look, not worth talking to or getting to know. He wanted them to not judge people from what they saw on the outside.

A good lesson - and a good teacher!

Snapshots

Someone we are always pleased to see is Bob from Bob's Rockshop. He tours the Rock and Gem Show taking photos and doing write-ups for his incredibly good website. He has dedicated one page for us here. Be sure to scroll down to the carvings of a frog and a seahorse. These were carved in Idar-Oberstein from last year's Variscite dig.

The last photo of our Tiger Eye slab and Bob's reflection is a gem in itself! I love it!