The Mystery of the Turquoise Nuggets

Got these turquoise nuggets in the mail the other day. They're a pretty good size as you can see from the quarter in the picture for scale. I am fairly certain I had an idea in mind when I bought them. I have no idea now what that was. I think I'm going to have to document my order receipt print out from now on with "I'm buying these to make X"

Normally I shrink the image a lot (and you can always click it to see it bigger) but I left this one fairly large (sorry dial up friends and visitors) because I think the veining and bright mineral specks are very interesting. Also because, see that nugget in between 10 o'clock and 11 o'clock to the left of the quarter? On the reverse it's pretty thoroughly veined, but on the side that's visible in the picture it's almost pristine and I'm almost tempted to see if there's something I can do with a setting to feature that side of that nugget as a pendant.

I have some large white howlite nuggets and also some tiger's eye that I'm now considering using in a chunky necklace with the turquoise. Who knows, maybe that was what I was thinking all along?

Tonight's work in progress is a piece using green ceramic beads joined with a hand made wrapped loop chain - it's time consuming, so I doubt I'll finish tonight or even tomorrow night.

This shows the sequence of the pattern I'm using. I'm also thinking about making it a multi-strand, so it might be a couple weeks (next week I'm traveling out of town and won't be beading) before I have the whole thing done.

If you have been to any really special places in or around Orlando, Florida you think I should visit to bead browse, leave a comment!