PrettyRock.com's Gemology and Faceting blog: December 2013

emcrorie · at 5:55 PM

http://prettyrock.com/winter_wonderland.html

Click the link above to see my Christmas card to everyone! (It has nothing to do with rocks!)
I made it using CSS3/HTML5 animation. If you are interested in the geeky side of its creation, ask. I would be happy to share. What you are seeing is generated by computer code. The only actual images are the snowflakes in the background and the little hearts.

It needs to be viewed in a "modern" browser, preferably Chrome, but does okay in current IE or passably in firefox and opera. No idea how it will look on your phone or ipad. If you see snowman body parts flying around, you probably need to try a different browser Chrome works best...really.

Edit: my niece just said it works fine on her IPad

emcrorie · at 12:22 PM

image source: http://iolite-wyoming.blogspot.com/

http://iolite-wyoming.blogspot.com/

Check out this great blog about prospecting for iolite and other gems in Wyoming with Professor Hausel. Fascinating!

emcrorie · at 3:09 PM

Look! Bubbles!

24.27ct Petroleum Included Quartz

See more here!

I LOVE these rocks! I'm kind of an inclusion nerd anyway, and these rocks just blow me away.

They are so cool to look at with a loupe or microscope. You can get lost in there!

From the description:

This is an extraordinarily rare herkimer-like doubly-terminated enhydro quartz crystal with three phase inclusions including petroleum, water, air, and anthraxolite. The petroleum is the yellow liquid that glows blue in black light. The anthraxolite is the black solid material floating in the petroleum or water.