A Chipmunk with Good Taste

I had a dog who liked to try to eat rocks when I went out looking for Fairburn Agates.  But, have you ever known a chipmunk to be a rock lover?

I had been cutting small Laguna agates in half on my 6″ trim saw one day, and had absent-mindedly left the stones out on the patio overnight.  They were in a small bag since I was trying to be more organized…only I wasn’t organized enough to actually put the bag of agates away.

The next morning, I got up and found that my two bags of rocks had been broken into.  One was in the same place, with a hole ripped into the middle, while the other one had been ripped open, and had been considered the better bag I guess, since someone…or something… had dragged it halfway into his hole underneath the deck.  For whatever reason, the chipmunk left it abandoned at the entrance of his  hole.

I am only glad he DID leave it there!  If he had managed to drag it in all the way, I would have lost several nice agates, and would have never known what had happened to them!

Fabulously Fairburn

I am not only an artist, but also a life-long rockhound! What does that mean? It means that I remember travelling with my family when I was very young to stand all day in the sun, digging through dirt to find treasures in the earth of semi-precious stones. That is part of the reason I absolutely love to use agates,  jaspers and other stones in my art jewelry. Some of the stones I use are treasures that I have found myself sometime over the thirty years I have spent since I was 6 years old in mining and searching for stones.

The fairburn agate in this piece is especially dear to me! Fairburn agates are one of my favorite treasures of all. Perhaps it is because I have many memories of hot days in the desert-like sun of South Dakota’s prairies, picking cactus needles out of shoes (and once, a behind…); finding rabbits, prairie dogs, and a coyote, and then, maybe even one small fairburn agate amongst all of the other thousands of weathered stones sprinkling the ground.

More recently, my dog Shonee and I went looking when I lived out in Fairburn area two years ago.  He had more fun chasing the antelope, but I did get him to lick rocks…just not the fairburns.  He wasn’t a very good hunter in that regard.  He wasn’t a true rockhound…just an adorable mutt.

Fairburn Agates are very difficult to find.  Truly you can spend an entire day of searching for them–though I wouldn’t recommend it (although my dad would)–and never find a single one.  The hunting grounds are generally well-picked over, and regulations are changing, making access to the locations and collecting of these gems more complicated.  However, not too far away from the beautiful Badlands is where you may find one.

So this is a little bit of the story behind the stone in the ring.  I just completed this piece yesterday and am quite fond of it.  The ring frames a Fairburn Agate, cut by me and finished by my father of The Agate Works  fame.  (He cuts beautiful designer cabochons out of what we have mined over the years and also what he has purchased.) The ring is set in sterling silver, and is made of hammered wire, cut sheet metal, and bezel wire soldered together using my acetylene torch.

I hope you enjoy the art and the reminiscence!