2024-8-1: little pretties

I've been working on a very special project for the last few months. Keith is teaching a silversmith class up at the North House Folk School up in Grand Marais and asked if I would create some of the stones to use as materials! Heck yeah I will! This was a special challenge because of the size - he asked for 8mm round cabs. As you may know, circles are difficult because everyone can see when they are slightly out of round, but I'm up for the challenge.

Fast forward two months, and they turned out great! I made a good variety of Lake Superior Agates, Montana Moss, petrified wood and a few others. If you're one of the students reading this, I'd love to see what you ended up making out of them! Shoot me an email

Here's the cool part -- by doing this, I ended up creating a lot of other shapes of smaller cabs as well, and they turned out really nice. They were a lot of fun to make and will also be available for purchase. Here's a preview with some of the names of the rocks if you were lucky enough to snag one!

Oh - and follow me on Instagram or Facebook because I've posted videos of many being made 😍

Here are the stones for Keith's class

It's like they're all looking up and smiling

The reddish and grayish ones are lake superior agates, the green ones at the lower right are Gary Green Jasper.

The black/gray/tan ones are Montana Moss Agates. Those are going to look so cool because they reflect from the back of the stone as well.

And a couple of odd balls. The two on the lower left are petrified wood. The pinkish one in the upper right is brecciated jasper. And the green one.... your guess is as good as mine 😅 Maybe Dave knows. (he doesn't)