A lone medium-sized Ametrine with concave pavilion facets is surrounded by an assortment of small garnets. It being 2020, as the pandemic news continued to get worse through the summer and into the fall months, I found myself in a faceting slump. I just could not get feeling creative enough to do justice to the great rough I had brought home from Tucson in February. So I started cutting simple, smaller, less costly pieces of garnet.
Since I have a soft spot for garnets there were plenty in the inventory. Some of them dated back to when I was just learning to facet and buying though the mail from advertisers in the back of Lapidary Journal. Thus some of the rough has been more to the learning-to-cut material rather than gem quality. Even then, garnets can often show all sorts of interesting inclusions when examined with the 10x loupe and still sparkle when held at a normal distance.
Normally, this time of year I would be making reservations for Tucson. Because the US has not brought COVID under control, I will not be going to Tucson in 2021. (At this point, we aren’t having our usual family gathering for Thanksgiving and Christmas is looking unlikely as well.) I guess I will keep working on small garnets for the next few months. Maybe if things are looking brighter by February, I will be inspired to start working on that 2020 stash.
Meanwhile, please stay safe folks. Listen to Dr. Fauci.