a crystals & jewelry adventure

What’s that rumbling noise? Do I hear music?

Look! It’s Victor Tabbycat bringing the Carnival of the Cats to a crystals & jewelry adventure!

It’s here! Carnival of the Cats #223! I’m standing in for Artsy Catsy who has to take care of a bedridden relative this weekend. We’re celebrating cats today and visiting a bunch of them, even though I’ve got a huge head cold. I’ll wear a mask so yall don’t get it.

Let’s go visit the kitties and get some grins and chuckles!

Cats love baskets. We all know this, right? Well Elms in the Yard shows definite evidence.

Over at Blog d’Ellison has SOME CATS.

The Poor Mouth shows that Robyn is unimpressed … “Call that the evil eye human?”

Om Shanti Handcrafts tells us about Two Days Later with some incredibly cute cute cute kitties.

Perfectly Parker says “Sometimes you just don’t mind striking a pose for the Mommy!”

Friday Cat Blogging comes to Manx Mnews.

The Scratching Post is shown Performance Art by their Maximum Leader.

It’s Furbaby Friday - Got cape, need boots at Texas Oasis.

At TacJammer, Mycah is in danger of being renamed Pokey.

There’s a great sunspot for Hi to nap in at Your Moosey Fate.

Matt shares part of the list of 67 Ways to Spoil Your Cat. A must read for all cat people.

The folks at Bloggg need help naming the new baby kitty, of course.

There’s a Whodunnit? mystery over at A Byootiful Life.

They’re Thankful over at Chey’s Place.

Mr. Milky of Artsy Catsy needs urgent purrs.

It’s Weekend Cat Blogging Outside! with CatSynth.

It was Salome Saturday with Kashim and Othello.

Uh oh. There are Cat Encounters of the Passive Aggressive Kind over at StrangeRanger.

Composite Drawlings has Friday Catblog: Kitty vacation pix.

The gang at Artsy Catsy doesn’t seem to be sure it’s really Easy Like Sunday Morning.

It’s also Easy Like Sunday Morning with Samantha Black and Mr. Tigger at Life from a Cat’s Perspective.

Friends Furever has a Not so Easy Sunday Morning - We have a guest!

Thanks for coming. The next Carnival of the Cats will be at Counting Cats on 9/7/08.

Isn’t this just a stunning bead. Yes, it’s a bead. A lampwork glass bead made by one of the best beads I know of, Kim Miles.

One thing I find interesting and a little sad in the metaphysical community is that glass is considered “not real” and often without metaphysical properties. Hmph. I say not.

Can you not just feel the spirit of this bead echoing even though the photo? It’s energy is of the lotus, with all these colors a symbol of purity, perseverence, wisdom of knowledge, and love. Each color relates to a chakra too. And glass is magical in itself. The whole process of turning silica into glass is in effect a miracle of transformation and brings those energies. I’ve always found glass to be a mystical and energetic thing. (more…)

Godiva had an All Chocolate room set up for Valentine’s day. Where WAS I? I must have been playing with crystals. Sometimes it’s hard to decide… crystals, chocolate, crystals, chocolate… eenie meeny… But I do love Godiva chocolate, almost as much at Papua New Guinea or real Belgian chocolate.

Maybe I can find some chocolate crystals!

The Question:

I am a psychic and I met someone in my building that I feel is into Santeria. I for one am just a psychic and I am not into any such religions or practices. There are many things I feel about this person that are not savory, if you know what i mean. People that practice Santeria don’t like to have anyone around them that can detect what they are up to and might cast spells against a person like myself to stop them from detecting anything, they would want to create blocks within me to accomplish this. And there are a lot of low level entities around my area, I have to keep smudging with sage and place sea salt around my apartment all the time to stop them from entering my apartment. I sense them since I am psychic and those entities don’t like it when I can detect them. I do say protection prayers and place white light bubbles around me all the time. Is there a way for me to protect myself in a more powerful way?

My Answer: (more…)

I adore chakra colors, stones, jewelry and energy. So I love making chakra jewelry.

So periodically I indulge myself with creating something wild and fun with chakras stones. I created this chakras necklace with bright colorful chakras stones including garnet, carnelian, citrine, green garnet, Caribbean blue chalcedony, amethyst and rainbow moonstone. And those are just the bigger stones in it! There are a plethora of smaller stones surrounding the larger ones, including ruby, purpurite, and others.

Then I couldn’t decide what color earrings would go with it properly. So I decided I’d just make one for every chakra! That way you can draw the energies of whichever chakra you’d like to embalance and empower when you wear it. As my cats would say, “Purrfect.”

The Question:

I have a question: are there stones or crystals that are particularly good for animal communication? I took a two day workshop and have been practicing but don’t seem to be progressing. Thank you.

My Answer:

The only one I know of offhand is Poppy Jasper or Brecciated Jasper. Leopardskin Jasper is good for communicating with totem animals, but I’ve not heard whether that carries over to other animal communication.

Try not to worry about the seeming not to progress with it. Often we move through things in fits and starts, it seems. Learn, grow, go, then sit at a plateau gathering mental, spiritual or physical energy for the next step up, then learn, grow and go again.

I got an email asking for more info on cleaning copper jewelry and about silver tarnishing. The fellow had read my tutorial on cleaning copper jewelry and information on cleaning silver and other metals first but had more questions.

HI WAS ON YOUR WEB SITE LOOKING AT WAYS TO CLEAN COPPER JEWELRY. I BEEN USING LEMON JUICE BY IT SELF IT NOT CLEANING AS GOOD AS I LIKE MAYBE I SHOULD PUT SOME SALT IN IT LIKE YOU DO MAYBE WITH SOME WATER.NOT TRIED VINAGAR YET. I NOTICE YOU SAID THE ACID IN TOMATOES WOULD CLEAN COPPER, WOULD TOMATO JUICE WORK? OR HOW ABOUT JUST CRUSHED TOMATOES? IAM KIND OF NEW WITH MAKING JEWELRY AND I MAKE COPPER BRACELETS AND NECKLESS AND RINGS. I MAKE STERLING SILVER RINGS. ANOTHER QUESTION ABOUT CLEANING STERLING SILVER. I BOUGHT SOME VERY FINE STERLING SILVER CHAINS 1.25MM TO PUT A PEARL DROP PENDANT ON(PEARL IS A GLASS PEARL(SWAROSKI CRYSTAL) ANY WAY THE CHAIN TURNS ALMOST BLACK OVER NIGHT,WHAT IS A GOOD HOME CLEANER FOR THAT? I THANK YOU FOR YOUR WEB SITE INFO TO HELP FOLKS LIKE ME. I WOULD HATE TO SELL SOMEONE A PIECE OF STERLING JEWELRY TO HAVE IT TURN AFTER WEARING IT ONE TIME,I MADE THE NECKLESS FOR MY WIFE IT TURNED OVER NIGHT,

Here is what I wrote as a response:

For copper by itself, I would definitely use the salt with the lemon juice if you’re going to use that method. After all, you can’t spend all night to get every piece of jewelry polished up! For the tomato based cleaners, I haven’t tried tomato juice or crushed tomatoes, but I would expect them to work. I’m just not sure how fast compared to the ketchup or worcestershire sauce. What I do is get cheap worcestershire sauce, use it for cleaning, then store it back in a container in the fridge for next time, so it ends up being less expensive over time and a copper polish.

Sterling silver is made up of 925 parts silver and 75 parts other metals, usually copper. That’s what makes sterling tarnish the same way as copper does, but usually slower. My guess is that there is a lot of sulphur or similar chemical in the water or air where you live. Or it’s possible that your wife has some sort of chemistry in or on her skin that turns things black very quickly. Sulphur, some perfumes, some lotions, some body chemistries, and some chemicals such as chlorine from swimming pools, will turn sterling black very quickly. In some cases it doesn’t even take overnight, depending on how strong the chemicals are. If it is something related to the environment, such as sulphur in the water, correct it by changing the environment if you can. If you can’t, then be sure to store all jewelry in a tarnish-resistant bag or in a bag with anti-tarnish paper. If it is something about the body chemistry or things used by the person wearing it, there’s not much you can do about it if the person can’t change whatever’s affecting the sterling except perhaps clean/polish it after and then store in the same type of tarnish-resistant bags overnights.

Another question is whether the chains you bought are actually sterling silver. Some unscrupulous dealers sell “silver” chains, which we may assume means they’re sterling, when they’re actually just silver colored or rhodium plated or some such thing. For that, you can only replace them with actual sterling chains.

However, one caveat to all this is that if you are soldering or otherwise heating jewelry to make it, you will need to use a proper pickling solution to get the fire scale off before polishing or regular cleaning even comes into the picture. If you need more information about that, Ganoskin at http://www.ganoksin.com/index.htm has a ton of information on soldering including cleaning after. (more…)

And organic or white tea goodies for your face and bod? Then check out Origins promotions and Get Nature’s Best Skin Care FREE! 8/22/08 - 9/3/08! They have 3 different free sample sets. Check ‘em out.

*I’m not paid or any such thing to tell you this. Just found it and thought it was cool.

Crystals

I just added Bunches of NEW crystals and stones including Individual Quartz Crystals, Unique Specimens, Dichroic Cabochons, and Individual Cabochons. And YES the sale is still on so everything is still 15% off everything in stock for the rest of August.

Weekend Cat Blogging

Two of my cats Mini (left) and Pepi (right) were helping out with a project. Fortunately they didn’t claw it.

This week’s Weekend Cat Blogging is being hosted by Samantha, Mr. Tigger and Mom Chandra at The Squillion Worlds Spins. They always do great WCB’s, so check it out. And see the WCB Schedule for future WCB’s.

Have a super weekend!

8/15/08: Dog Days of Summer Sale starts now with 15% off everything in stock for a limited time only.