August on the bench
What's come through the shop this month, what got cut, and what's heading out the door.
August was heavier on new rough than on finished pieces. A batch of Ethiopian material came in from the July session — various body tones, most of it still in matrix. The carving in the photo is from an earlier session; the fish shape took several rounds of bur work before it came together. Carving is different from cab cutting in that the finished piece has to exist in your head before the first pass. You can't add material back.
What did finish this month: two Welo crystal cabs, both blue-green dominant, both headed to the Etsy shop. One piece of boulder opal from a Queensland slab — the matrix cut ended up more interesting than expected. The Koroit network ran through the ironstone at an angle that produced a roughly triangular finished shape. Kept it.
What's coming in September
The Virgin Valley trip is on the calendar for late September or early October. That means the next few weeks are about getting current inventory organized and documented before I'm offline for a week. Whatever comes out of the ground this fall is a separate inventory project — Virgin Valley material doesn't move fast. It gets watched, and then it gets decided.