Pretty rocks of the day: Rutilated quartz

[stephbg]

My rutilated quartz pieces are clear quartz with golden needles intruding through the middle. The tumbled specimen looks like spun gold suspended in glass, and unfortunately I wasn't able to really capture the shiny on them all. It's a frustrating business, photographing shiny things from a position of ignorance.











The nice thing about these is that while the formations are tiny and beautiful, the actual specimens are quite sturdy, so they take handling very well. They demand to be held up to the light.