Sapphires!

We are home from mining for sapphires in Philipsburg today, and for the first time we left stones to be heat treated and faceted. Now I am thinking I might be regretting having one of my stones heat treated. It was already pretty dark--though more aqua than royal blue--and it might have been nice to just have it natural. The heat process typically clarifies the stone and saturates the color, but there is something to be said for natural...

Anyway it was amazing how many good sized unfractured sapphires we found today. Jessie, Kyla and I all had rough stones in the 2-2/12 carat size with no fractures. Kyla's biggest stone had a beautiful iron spot in it that will go yellow with heat. I think it's going to be gorgeous cut and will be about 1/2 to 3/4 carat. My big pink one has a large fracture that doesn't go all the way through so the appraisers thought it was worth doing. I said it was okay to cut it with a bit of an inclusion. The stones below are all mine from one small bag of gravel and include my large dark one and my big pink one. I left one more round one a little smaller than the one on the upper left to be done too. Now we just have to wait seven weeks until they're done!