Months ago, @Fluffy_PickleSniffer noticed that I like shiny and contacted me offering to share some of her ever expanding collection with me. Of course I said yes and gave her my address. At the time, she had mentioned health problems and issues with driving so when the shiny rocks didn’t arrive, I pretty much forgot about it.
Imagine my delight to receive a box of rocks in the mail today. She not only collects, but polishes and thoughtfully put names to almost everything. What an amazing surprise, thank you again Fluffy!
My uncle turned a washing machine into a stone tumbler to polish all the agates he found on his farm. They were a wonderful feature of visits there as a child. From there, I advanced to other rocks too. Now, there’s YouTube and I can watch geodes and other stones being cut and polished to my heart’s content.
What is the “dalmatian” looking stone? That’s the only one I’m not familiar with. Ah, Google tells me it is actually called “dalmatian jasper” even though it’s not a jasper. Fun!
The Dalmatian looking stone is actually called Dalmatian stone or Dalmatian Jasper. I find tons of it around here in northern WI.
On a slightly odd, but not completely unrelated tangent, I had a sewer drain backup in my basement yesterday. (lovely). The guy came to clean the pipes out and as he was cleaning up afterwards, he noticed my rock tumbler rumbling away on the kitchen counter. “Hey!” he said, “I used to tumble rocks for years! I forgot all about that, I wonder what I did with my machine?” so then of course I had to give him a tour of my rocks, which are scattered all over bookshelves and things. I handed him one huge monster that I found and fell in love with, even though I can’t tumble it, and said that I had no idea what it was, but thought there was mica in it. He looked at it, weighed it in his hand and snapped his fingers, “No, no, it’s a rock with an F at the beginning… ahhh, what is it?” and I said, “Not feldspar?” “YEAH! That’s it!” “Really? I have FELDSPAR in my house? COOOOOL!” and yeah, the whole conversation was like that. I’m a weirdo - and so happy when I find other weirdos like me.
Years back the aerospace company I worked for had clubs for the employees. Bass fishing, bicycle etc. One was a rock hound club. I never joined, but some friends were members and I went with them to a geode hunt on a farm in north east Missouri.
We came back with a bout 8 or 9. So the next project was to break or cut them open to see what the inside looked like.Some were full of crystals, while one or two were pretty solid all the way through. I don’t know why though.
It’s been 40 years and I think I still have one or two around.
