And, the post I intended to make (sort of)

This is my new wand. It is made from a piece of rose that was harvested last year. Since then, it has sat on my altar, while I waited to know what to do with it. I began to get a good idea toward the end of the year, but didn’t actually start working on it until this spring. I stripped the bark off the wood, sanded it and then laquered it. There are seven rows of seven stones, starting tightly clustered near the tip and spreading out as they descend toward the middle of the wand. The stones are peridot and it was quite a process getting 49 perfectly matched stones. Of course, when I ordered them, I didn’t specify that they be perfectly matched-that was the decision of the gem dealer. The copper wire divides the wand in two. First, it wraps around the wand three times, and then spirals, with three full rotations for each spiral. I still need to laquer the copper so it stays bright.

I’ve never worked with gemstones before, and their size (3mm) was a real challenge. Even using fine pointed tweezers, it was hard to hold onto them. In fact, the day I started work with them, I lost one. I had been holding it with tweezers and the tweezers snapped shut. The stone flew in the air. My daughter and I both looked up and said “uh oh.” But neither of us saw where it landed. For that matter, neither of us heard it land. We both searched for it, we crawled on the floor; we took rags and swept everything before us. No peridot. When DH came home, I told him the story. His first comment? “Did you look in your hair?” Well, no, I hadn’t, but by that point, I had pulled my hair up, put it down, ponytailed it and took it down again. If it had landed in my hair, I figured it was gone. Well, you can guess how this story ends; the next morning, when I was combing my hair, I found it. Somehow, through all the messing with my hair, with sleeping, the stone stayed put until I was able to retrieve it. I was very pleased to tell DH that he had been right.

I started using this wand with this months New Moon. It feels very different from my ebony wood wand, but since I intend to use them very differently, thats fine.