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Unakite Finding Crystals Naturally

Posted: Wed May 23, 2018 7:57 pm
by EveningWithAstaroth
Hi.

Recently while out at the local park I found a rough stone called unakite by the old town rail road tracks. This rock is found most commonly in the Appalachian area in North Carolina. It commonly had been carried by glacial drifts in the past.

This topic is because I had felt like sharing, and asking whether you all like to buy all your stones, or if there are some here like me as well who likes to go looking for them and finding them naturally?

When I was younger my parents and siblings used to go to different stone quarries locally and look for different gem stones for the day. We had brought back tourmalines, green, watermelon, beryls, aquamarines, and garnets.

I do really miss those old days. Now a days I look for more precious variety stones everywhere if I can not make it to a quarry. I haven't been to a natural stone mine in years. I was about to give up, but last week finally I got a break and found this rough Unakite stone. I did not know what it was at first, but took it home and researched.

Image


This is a photo of the rough stone I had found.

And here is a link for those interested in its metaphysical properties: https://mycrystalpedia.wordpress.com/u/unakite/

It am quite glad I found this stone, it came just when needed, and gave me hope that my efforts of getting out for a walk, and keeping faith that there is still something awesome to find out there, are not in vain. I am rather fond of this stone, and now it has a place of residence on one of my altars.

So which do you all prefer? To buy your stones, to find them yourself, or a combination of both?

Re: Unakite Finding Crystals Naturally

Posted: Wed May 23, 2018 9:44 pm
by SpiritTalker
Oh I'm a rock hound to the bone. My "working" stones are mostly natural finds but I bought shungite for water purifying...and it snow balled into a level 5 avalanche with orgone generators, & assorted size pyramids and spheres. I found a lovely little piece of white quartz stuck in the roots of a tree. The stone has triangular whorls where crystal points were forming give or take another million years. T here are baskets of rocks in every room. Alas, i purchase clear quartz because I can't get around and go dig some. That would be my dream vacation (for 5 minutes anyhow.) I sort of er, collect stones with interesting markings like rings, footprints, shell impressions & I even have one with a natural image of my old dog on it. He was a one-ear-up beagle-mix. What are the odds?!

Re: Unakite Finding Crystals Naturally

Posted: Thu May 24, 2018 1:17 am
by Firebird
Ooo I do like to dig around in the rocks and find many of them in my travels, mostly I do not know what they are except for an area close to me that has like grade b crystals. I find them in the creek bed or off the trails after the rain. The beach is a great place too and I have found some jade and moonstones which are more like chalcedony pebbles. Many other various sparklie or odd shaped. I like to look for the holy stones, of any kind, I have a few in lava, sandstone and crystal.
I have a strange rock that just looks like plain sandstone, about the size of a potato. On one side there is a marking in a circular manner it is cut into the rock like a fossil, found it in a river bed when we were fishing, yet when I took it to my geology professor he and the whole department were stumped. They wanted to break it to look inside, I said no way! Maybe I should post a picture of it.
I like to paruse the gem shows, but I haven't seen one in a really long time. There you will get the best deals especially if you wish to purchase in bulk. Sometimes at the end of the show vendors just don't want to pack em up and let them go for even cheeper. Lately my local health food store has expanded their inventory and they have some goodies in polished, raw and made into jewelry. Shungite pendants!
Over the years I have gotten pretty familiar with the stones and the thing I see now which is really disturbing is the stones are being adulterated. You'll be hard pressed to find good quality turquoise anymore. Mostly dyed howlite. Now agates are dyed too. Found a beautiful gem that was accidently created out of the ash of Mt St Helens. Then there is other stuff like citrine, real citrine is pretty hard to find, mostly heat treated amethyst.
So buyer beknowlegable! these guys are down on the new agers but have some good info otherwise, http://www.fakeminerals.com/
bb, Firebird

Re: Unakite Finding Crystals Naturally

Posted: Thu May 24, 2018 7:59 pm
by EveningWithAstaroth
SpiritTalker wrote:Oh I'm a rock hound to the bone. My "working" stones are mostly natural finds but I bought shungite for water purifying...and it snow balled into a level 5 avalanche with orgone generators, & assorted size pyramids and spheres. I found a lovely little piece of white quartz stuck in the roots of a tree. The stone has triangular whorls where crystal points were forming give or take another million years. T here are baskets of rocks in every room. Alas, i purchase clear quartz because I can't get around and go dig some. That would be my dream vacation (for 5 minutes anyhow.) I sort of er, collect stones with interesting markings like rings, footprints, shell impressions & I even have one with a natural image of my old dog on it. He was a one-ear-up beagle-mix. What are the odds?!
Ah yes so you both find your stones naturally and purchase some as well.

Personally I am not opposed to purchasing stones either, but I normally can not afford to. I recently have been trying to start more of a stone collection so have tried to purchase some cheap. I can not currently afford crystal skulls, crystal eggs, or carvings despite I am indeed interested in these types of things. My stone purchases for the collection I have begun have not been too often. I've purchased a small half pound assortment of a few different small polished stones like jaspers, tiger's eye etc, and my most recent purchase has been a Himalayan salt lamp. That is about it for purchased. As for finding natural stones, I like you look for stones I find to be interesting even if many are plain sedimentary stones. I have a large stone of feldspar with some iron inclusions that is pretty ordinary to most, but to me it looks like it has a serious old man face, which I find interesting.

It feels good to find a stone more recognized as a semi-precious stone for jewelry, which the unakite is, however. Such finds for me feel like surprises, brings the wonder and joy from childhood back.
firebirdflys wrote:Ooo I do like to dig around in the rocks and find many of them in my travels, mostly I do not know what they are except for an area close to me that has like grade b crystals. I find them in the creek bed or off the trails after the rain. The beach is a great place too and I have found some jade and moonstones which are more like chalcedony pebbles. Many other various sparklie or odd shaped. I like to look for the holy stones, of any kind, I have a few in lava, sandstone and crystal.
I have a strange rock that just looks like plain sandstone, about the size of a potato. On one side there is a marking in a circular manner it is cut into the rock like a fossil, found it in a river bed when we were fishing, yet when I took it to my geology professor he and the whole department were stumped. They wanted to break it to look inside, I said no way! Maybe I should post a picture of it.
I like to paruse the gem shows, but I haven't seen one in a really long time. There you will get the best deals especially if you wish to purchase in bulk. Sometimes at the end of the show vendors just don't want to pack em up and let them go for even cheeper. Lately my local health food store has expanded their inventory and they have some goodies in polished, raw and made into jewelry. Shungite pendants!
Over the years I have gotten pretty familiar with the stones and the thing I see now which is really disturbing is the stones are being adulterated. You'll be hard pressed to find good quality turquoise anymore. Mostly dyed howlite. Now agates are dyed too. Found a beautiful gem that was accidently created out of the ash of Mt St Helens. Then there is other stuff like citrine, real citrine is pretty hard to find, mostly heat treated amethyst.
So buyer beknowlegable! these guys are down on the new agers but have some good info otherwise, http://www.fakeminerals.com/
bb, Firebird


So. Cal must be a great place to be at for stones. I live on the eastern US coast so the stones naturally found here may indeed be quite a different ballpark than those found on the west coast.

I love beach combing!!! A couple days now here that is where I have been. On the Maine beaches is where I love to look for stones. Some stones I find very interesting have been found there at the beach. I went one day on a beach outing looking for sea glass and stones, and came back with some sea glass and a few very neat stones. Then out again to another beach yesterday to collect some beach sand for magic work, and found quite a bit of different stones, but not so much sea glass. Different beaches seem to have different stones, and items, as well I find a different beach may have a completely different color of sand.

When I was young here in the town I live, growing up I had no problem finding Geodes out in the woods using a combination of intuition and getting used to the physical attributes of a Geode. There came a point at 12 years old from a number of feet away I could be able to spot a group of rocks and if there was a geode in the group be able to spot the physical attributes from that distance. So to someone else- my father- if he was out in the woods with me while I was out looking for Geodes- he would see me look in a direction, he would look, take note of me looking at a group of rocks at a tree trunk base, he would watch me walk up to the rocks, pick one up, walk to the driveway with it, stating I had found a Geode. He asked "How do you know"? I told him "I was starting to learn how to tell". I would smash the rock open on the driveway and it would be indeed a Geode.

I would find the white quartz type, and the purple amethyst type, and for a while I could even listen intuitively to get a sense of the color inside. One day he made a remark how I may not always be right about the color- and how it is sometimes possible to mis-interpret one's intuition- which is true- but I didn't need his second guessing either. After he said that I started to be constantly wrong about which color was inside, instead of usually right. :roll:

And then we moved from this town for quite a while.

Now I've come full circle back to my home town, and I have been out walking when I can get out looking for Geodes. loveface

Like you I like to find stones at the beach. I've found many interesting sedimentary natural stones.

With the buying and the Citrine thing, yes much advertised can be fake, especially online, which is one of the reasons I like to look myself for natural precious stones for the area- in Maine- things like garnet, tourmaline etc.

The other reason is it is just something I love to do. Even if all I find are sedimentary natural non precious stones, I still have to find out what it is, how it was formed, what the base minerals are, the hardness etc.

My last trip to the park I brought home some stones that look almost like sandstone, and a couple pieces of pink granite. I brought the pink granite home to my father and asked him what it was and he told me granite. I asked him "Really? Can granite naturally be pink"? And he told me yes. I would not have known this, if I hadn't gone looking.

Thanks for the chat and your responses you guys. Good to see others whom like to go out and explore and look for natural stones.

I find it to be one of my favorite past times these days. I am getting exercise, while going on an adventure.

Re: Unakite Finding Crystals Naturally

Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 7:27 am
by SpiritTalker
Granite comes in several colors. I used to work at a cemetery and the most astonishing monument color was polished black granite & one of the most expensive. Red granite is very popular & is a natural, not dyed, deep red wine color. But my personal favorite is called blue pearl ... It's a deep navy blue with sparkles. It's way out of my price range :( . The pink & gray colors are most common in the cemetery for headstones & used as the foundation under the bronze plate memorials that are displayed on granite.

We have three companies in town that carve the stone memorials. They import pre-sawed, unpolished granite slabs from quarries around the world to get different colors. To my joy they all have back lot dumpsites of broken pieces that can be scavenged with permission. I brought home a heavy, 12-inch square, 7-inch thick pink/black/gray granite slab with a 4-inch hole drilled clear through. It was meant to hold a vase but one corner is badly chipped so I turn that to the back. I stand it on edge in my garden as a "holey" or Hag stone altar. They couldn't sell it damaged & thought of it as junk, so I got it free :mrgreen:

Re: Unakite Finding Crystals Naturally

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 1:28 am
by Ethereal Moon Rose
Wow loveface

Re: Unakite Finding Crystals Naturally

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2018 12:22 pm
by Firebird
SpiritTalker wrote:To my joy they all have back lot dumpsites of broken pieces that can be scavenged with permission.
:shock: That's awesome!!!
EveningWithAstaroth wrote:There came a point at 12 years old from a number of feet away I could be able to spot a group of rocks and if there was a geode in the group be able to spot the physical attributes from that distance
What a skill!, But as you get to know the stones it makes good sense that you can recognize them, even from afar because you are attuned to them. It's kinda like recognizing a friend. Even like plants, once you know what they look like you can pick them out of a crowd.
The beaches here also have a wide variety of stones. There is a place called jade cove, and moonstone beach, you can guess what is found there! I frequently gather my sand at the beach for the incense cauldron, there is one beach that consists of tiny tiny pebbles, I really like that beach and end up filling my pockets with the stuff. I also collect sea glass, it's great when you find blue, so rare. Lately I've added river glass, usually it's not as tumbled though, maybe it's the area i'm collecting it at.
You know...you should talk to our resident rock hound evil ed, he is very knowledgeable on the stones. I don't see him come on very often though.
Gotta get a pic of my sandstone potato rock to you guys, but now I'll be away from home for awhile. Speaking of rocks...we are going to go through some fabulous rock country, (Utah) I'll see if I can post about it when we are there.
bye for now!
Firebird