Hypogymnia Phys...Waitaminit!

Day 293: Hypogymnia physodes is a fairly common lichen in the Pacific Northwest. Like other Hypogymnias, its lobes are tubular, and distinguishing the particular species sometimes involves separating the grey-green top surface from the black bottom surface so that the medullary ceiling can be observed. A member of our Morris dance side handed me a small brown box containing a specimen at Monday's dance-out, and I recognized it immediately as a representative of the tube lichens.

Seriously, though...when Tink handed me a tiny package, I was puzzled. There was no special event to commemorate. What could it possibly contain? I lifted the lid and found this darling lichen pendant which she had picked up at a craft fair. "I knew you had to have it, Crow," she said. If not H. physodes (shown here growing on a fir tree in my yard), it is certainly a member of the genus and as such, is destined to become one of my favourite pieces of jewelry. Thank you, Tink!

Lovely Lapis Lazuli

Day 353: My interest in rocks began at a very early age, and by the time I was nine years old, I had a mineral collection which (to my mother's dismay) covered the top of my dresser. Each specimen was labelled with what I believed it to be (often erroneously) and where I had found it. As I grew to be an adult, I developed an interest in stone-cutting as an adjunct to rockhounding, and was not content to work simply with slabs of agate or pieces of Australian opal. One of my favourite stones was lapis lazuli.

Lapis is somewhat difficult to work. Pyrite inclusions are desirable; veins of quartz are not. Both create problems for the lapidarist in that they are softer or harder than the blue matrix material. I was quite proud of the uniform finish I achieved on this particular stone (a 20 x 30 mm. cab).

Fake lapis abounds in the jewelry market. Most often, it will be blue-dyed howlite. However, although howlite also contains quartz, it never contains the pyrites which typify true lapis.

Cat Box

Day 45: Afraid the burglars will find your good jewelry? Hide it in the cat box! Oh, wait a minute, I don't think they meant a "cat box" like this one. This cute little kitty has an empty head and a hollow tummy, perfect for stashing just a few treasures. She came to me by way of a friend, a Christmas gift and one I've greatly enjoyed, although I usually keep her fed up on pennies instead of pearls and amber.

Metals And Stones

Day 9: The hobby of rockhounding inevitably creates a desire to do more than tumble-polish stones, collect minerals and go on digs. The enthusiastic lapidarist finds himself (or herself) tempted by equipment such as rock saws, grinders and faceting machines. Naturally, the acquisition of one or more of those devices leads to the issue of what to do with your finished gems, and mounting them is the next logical step. Ready-made settings are commonly available for rings and pendants, but some hobbyists take their craftsmanship further and delve into casting or metalsmithing.

You would think that with my penchant for doing tiny needlework and beading that I might have fallen into this art easily, but that was far from the case. In fact, it was my ham-handed husband who painstakingly modelled the most detailed and delicate waxes to be cast in gold. His skill at faceting was amazing, and he spent hours at the machine, an Optivisor entrenched in the wrinkles of his forehead helping him see that the "meets" met at precise angles. On the other hand, I dabbled with silversmithing using pre-made bezels and shanks, soldering the parts together to hold the cabochons I turned out on a polisher. Bruce worked with precious stones: sapphire, tanzanite, garnet, alexandrite and such. I futzed with agates and opals and occasionally a piece of lapis lazuli. Mutt and Jeff we were, or Jack Spratt and his wife, opposite to what you would have expected of us. Bruce's work was elegant and classy, mine clunky and serviceable.

The stones and rings in this photo were all hand-cut save for the brown Linde star sapphire in the top left. All are Bruce's work except the bezel-mounted fire agate set in sterling. That one's mine.

Treasure In The Mist

Day 297: Back in the Good Old Days when cameras used film or plates coated in emulsions, photographers created special effects both in and out of the darkroom. One of my favorite techiques was the use of filters, specifically what I call "creative filters," i.e., homemade devices placed between the lens and the subject. These creative filters could be anything from a piece of window screen, sheer fabric, cellophane to glass coated with a thin film of petroleum jelly or other oily substance. The latter was often used to give a soft, romantic atmosphere to wedding photos. Nowadays, of course, special effects are something many of us add during post-processing, however I have yet to find any program which can duplicate the unique appearance created by shooting through a piece of Vaselined glass.

Crow's Crows

Day 272: "Where did you get your nickname? Is it a Native American name?" If I only had a nickel for every time I've been asked those questions, I'd be a rich Crow. The answer to the second is that no, it is not a Native American name, although it could be said that it was derived in much the same way that many cultures name their children at birth and then another appellation is given or chosen at adulthood as the person's "real" name. This leads into the answer for the first question: I have been associated with crows since I was very young.

My dad started it. He was a fan of the "Dick Tracy" comic strip, in which a little girl who was called Wings appeared occasionally. She had long, black hair which was worn swept back from her temples in a somewhat more flamboyant manner than the way I wore my own long, black hair. Daddy started calling me "Wings," and when we were working out in our house vegetable garden, he would recite poems to me which often contained crows. "One for the worm, one for the crow, one to die and one to grow," he would say as he placed four corn kernels in each hill, and would then tell me that the corn had an even greater chance of survival since it was covered on two accounts: one to grow, and another to grow for the crow, i.e. for his Wings.

With this initial association, a love of Edgar Allan Poe's "Raven" was a natural outgrowth. I began looking for crows in other venues and never failed to speak with them when I saw them in the wild. Their intelligence appealed to me, as did the fact that they were social pariahs for the most part, as was I. The more I observed them, the more fascinated I became with the species overall, seeing perhaps more of myself in them (both good and bad) as I came to know them better. I learned to speak a few words of their language (ever so much more complex than any human speech) and took to feeding them in my yard. They grew to accept me, many times coming down to the "crow board" before I'd walked five feet away. My studies of them deepened and then widened to include the other corvids, but by that time, I was already known as one of the flock, a Crow.

In the Native American fashion, Crow could be said to be my "spirit guide"; in the Australian Aboriginal culture, my Dreaming. Crows and I are inseparable. Raven, that much-revered benevolent trickster of the Pacific Northwest's First People, is a friend by extension, as are the family of Jays. Crow watches out for me, alerting me to unusual things in the forest, sometimes guiding me to discoveries and adventures. Crow teaches me as I observe his relationship with the natural world, and his interactions with members of his own kind and with other species. Crow is ever present in my life, and I have only to give a quick caw from the back porch to find his ready companionship. Caw! And that's how I got my name.