Off to school!

William Holland, here I come!

I found out a couple days ago I received a club scholarship to a week at William Holland School of Lapidary Arts. I had to be sure I could schedule it, and have my dogs and my son covered, before I could commit, but everything is lined up and I'm going to the cabochons class the week of September 6.

Whoo-hoo!

In return, I will come back and teach a minimum of 30 classes at the club.

I've already kind of started getting into what must be done. The president and one of the board members had a piece of equipment torn down, and on Saturday morning I jumped into helping with it. I've already figured out that lapidary equipment isn't rocket science; it's more just common sense. And the more I can learn, the more I can fix--plus the more of my own I can fix.

Now I need to find somewhere close to William Holland where I can go dig rocks. We get out at noon on Wednesday and have the afternoon off, so I want to go somewhere I can do some rockhounding.

All sorted out.......

After weeks of having boxes of rocks just sitting around in my office I finally have them all sorted and catalogued and put away. Well, more or less. The ones I'm still cutting are in a flat box until I have time to get a full day to sit on the porch and cut slabs on the small saw.

Now if it would just stop raining I could uncover the slab saw and cut some of this picture jasper I unearthed in one of the boxes! Four rocks, all different, each one a different color, and I have no idea which picture jasper any one of them is.

I'm in a holding pattern waiting for my supplier in Africa to have my order ready. He's sending me a sample of African turquoise to have analyzed so we both know exactly what it is. The gemologist I've talked to is guessing either real, honest-to-goodness turquoise or azurite; it will be a couple weeks before I know. Just in time to finalize the order, I think.

I do know it will have two kinds of picture jasper in it. Fun stuff. The picture in this entry is Kalahari picture jasper. I haven't had time to cut any of it yet, but I'd like to find the time.