Jo goes, Opals begin

Sunday, May 18, 2008

I tried to get Jo to call her boss and tell her that she broke her leg and could not return to work for at least another couple of weeks, but she said she couldn’t. We left for the Ashville airport at 7:30 am to catch a noon flight. I had estimated approximately a three hour drive; we made it in two and a half. Jo did not want to take any chances of missing her flight. I don’t blame her, I hate to be late for anything too and if you miss a flight out here in the boonies, you might not get another for several days. We hugged and said our goodbye’s and I drove away. It sure was nice having Jo spend the week with me but now it’s over and I get to sleep in my own bed.

Sunday night is orientation and sign in night at William Holland School and this is week is my highly anticipated class “Opal Cutting”. I got to the school around 5:30 and signed in, sat down and started taking to a lady from Kentucky. She had one of those slow southern drawls that makes you want to finish her sentences, about that time, all hell broke loose in the cafeteria. I thought it was one of those old time church revivals, what, with all that holler’en and scream’en a go’en on. (I’m even talking like that Kentucky woman.) Apparently, six long lost women found each other at that very moment in time and weren’t shy about letting the world know about it. I told them that they were having entirely too much fun and that they would have to leave. They collectively boo’ed me and invited me to sit with them. Since I had already sat down with the K-e-n-t-u-c-k-y lady I felt it would have been rude to change seats, so I told them that I was afraid to get too close to that much estrogen. I said, I thought that it might rip the space-time continuum and suck me into an alternate parallel universe where women ruled the world. One very quick rabble rouser shot back "As if we don't rule the world here", and we all laughed at that. I labeled them “trouble” and we kidded around with each other during the week. I didn’t see a lot of them as they were staying at the school and I wasn’t, but it was a nice diversion. There are pictures of them on the “Web album” I don’t even remember all of their names. (just click on any pic in the blog and then click on album)


Monday - Friday May 18 – 23, 2008

I won’t bore you with all the details, but I will say it was a great class and I got to cut a maximum amount of stones. The teacher said that for a beginner that I was very good, my stones were smooth and scratch free with just the right amount of crown and girdle for the stone selected. However, he said that I was a little heavy handed. Which means: I am impatient and perhaps might cut away some of the color in order to uncover the treasure too quickly. I agreed with his assessment.

This is the Opals class projects. My opals are on the right side of the photo. 21 in all.



Here are a few of the individual stones I cut. (More pics are on the “web album”).

This is a fossil shell that opal replaced the shell. I left it in it's origional shape and just smoothed and polished it. It was one of the nicest stones in the class.



The instructor had an opal evaluation program on his computer and we entered this next stones characteristics (fire, pattern, clarity, etc. anout ten in all) and it said it should retail for around $3,000.00 dollars. I don't think so. I maean it's pretty but there is no way someone would pay that much for it. It is hard to get the real fire in a picture. It is concidered a predominately green and purple multi color crystal stone with a broad flash pattern. It is 8mm wide X 16mm long and weighs 5.5 ct.




I love this next stone. It is an Ethiopian opal and has a very rare ribbon pattern with lots of fire and color. Ethiopian opal is uausally too dark to see much fire but this stone is a special one.












I also got pictures of the other class projects here are some of the best.

This is the Glass Fusing class. I would like to try this stuff it looks fun.





This is the Wire wrap 1 class for this week. I think they did better and more complicated projects than we did. I was supposed to have Wire II next week but the teacher canceled so they had to put me in Wire I. Which is this teacher. I am looking forward to her class.







This is the Chain making class. It is amazing that they assemble these chains with one conecting ring at a time. This is another cool class. I just don't have the time or money to take them all.







This is one of the Cabachon class'es projects. he seems pretty good. I thought he had the best stuff in this class. I thought I would need to take a Cab class but I think I have the hang of it and can get better with practice on my own.



This is the Silver I class. I will be taking this in my last week.



Well I'm finally caught up on the blog but classes take up much time and I'm sure I will fall behind again, but I will eventually get it all down.

See Ya'

AV