Hope this ok. If not I'll remove. This is a cool rock. With a cool name. And a cool story.

I will downvote anyone who says salt.

Some kind of quartzy marbly thing? I found it by a hardware store in Northern Ontario.

Fits great in my wooden hand in my fruit bowl.

Said that they are petrified wood. I guess they look like it. $5

Thinking about cutting and polishing them. Then put them in some walking sticks I'm making.

I bought a rock tumbler specifically for grinding down minerals for pigments. I didn't expect it to come with a big bag of cool rocks and all the stuff to tumble. I know I know - the first hit is always free.

The clear one is just a broken piece of glass I tossed in to see what happened. What happened was it got smooth.

I found this in the dirt today. All one piece of whatever it is. Mostly greyish translucent with very oriented lines of brown in the corner section that makes it glow orange in the sunlight. The edge looks like it breaks like flint or obsidian. But the larger surfaces are like very smooth bark on a tree branch. Any ideas what it is?

So we have this rock that looks like a potato. I think everyone will agree that Kevin here looks like a potato. We found him on a long walk. Our first strategic use of Kevin, we scrubbed him and put him in a pile of potatoes that my mother was peeling for potato salad. Yara yara yara, much hilariously was had by all. I am trying to think of other pranks we've done on each other with Kevin. It's usually that one, we always find it hilarious (like the rubber lizard we put in each other's sinks. It's about time, and my wife's turn to prank someone, for that to happen I should get ready) you'd think we'd get tired of it but we love this rock.

My cat, she loves Kevin too. Cuddles with him all the time. All the time except today, it seems. She's been sick the last few days, so she's just cuddling with me when she's not playing. She will, however, pose with Kevin. She loves taking photos. So I included some cat tax.

I recently posted about the lapis lazuli a rockhounding buddy sent me.

But I wanted to destroy it.

My goal was to create the original ultramarine pigment of renaissance artists. After a few failed tries manually, I ordered a rock tumbler and — since lapis lazuli is SUPER hard and I didn't want to have to separate grit from pigment, I got steel paint mixing balls to grind it down. That way I can separate any steel bits at the end with a magnet.

After a week, the pieces look like this. It's so pretty I'm keeping these to polish and turn into, I donno, a necklace or witchcraft or something, while I let the balls work on the rest of the bits.

Type, shape, historical significance, scientific merit...

Don't remember where I found it but it's cool!

I hope this isn't cheating... even though I made the rules. I definitely cheated by ordering this in to test in my endless experiments with earth pigments — thus why it's in my mortar.

But it's a nice pic, right?

What could it be? A few other gem species are forming what I think are hydrates. They've been in a room temp, somewhat humid environment and are growing yellow crystal material.

It sheds green sparkles every time I touch it. Mica mines operate near here, which makes me think this is a chunk. Very shiny.

Found it on the coast of France during a vacation a while back.

ANYWHERE

Not sure what type, but it took a while to get all of the clay out of it...

A friend and avid rock hound sent this for my natural pigment experiments.

Now to figure out how to grind it down, it's harder than I thought.

Bonus black light pic:

Magnified view

Not sure if rules allow for painted rocks but this one from my kid is the coolest rock ever!