Birthstones: Bloodstone (March)

If you're a March baby and aquamarine isn't really your bag, you can claim bloodstone instead! It was once known as heliotrope, but these days heliotrope is more associated with the pinkish-purple flower than the green and red mineral.

I've finished the entire "modern" list of birthstones. But there are so many more left! There's the earlier Kansas City list, the British Goldsmiths' list, and the original Tiffany & Co. list to go through, not to mention astrological associations. First, though, we'll finish up both of the Kansas City lists.

Who in this world of ours their eyes
In March first open shall be wise,
In days of peril firm and brave,
And wear a bloodstone to their grave.

The old name of heliotrope refers to Greco-Roman ideas about the relationship between stones and the sun ("helio" being sun and "trope" being to turn). It's unclear when people started referring to the stone as "blood jasper" and then "bloodstone," but it probably began in the Middle Ages in Europe. As the story goes, the blood from Christ's crucifixion stained green stones that were at his feet, creating the first bloodstone. 

Unsurprisingly, bloodstone was also associated with martyrs as well, sometimes called "martyr's stone." It was a popular choice for gemstone engravings depicting martyrdom or the crucifixion. It was also a popular stone to use for signet rings and seals. 

"Christ at the Column,"  17th Century Italian

Bloodstone is a silicate, like so many other stones, so it is primarily built out of SiO4. The base green color comes from inclusions of chlorite and amphibole within the silicate; both of those minerals are green due to a variety of elements: lithium, magnesium, or iron in conjunction with aluminum and hydrogen. The orange-red flecks of "blood" are due to iron oxides (such as hematite). 

Chlorite

Amphibole

But the association of blood with bloodstone has been around for longer than the Middle Ages. In many cultures, including India and Babylonia, it was believed to stop bleeding and thus was a popular stone for warriors to carry. Likewise it was thought to help with anything related to blood and its circulation, including venomous animal bites and aphrodisiacs.

Bloodstone is lovely but not prohibitively expensive. There are large sources in India, Australia, South Africa, and the US (to name a few), so there isn't much of a market for synthetic or fake bloodstone. However, bloodstone can often resemble jaspers, particularly fancy and ocean jaspers, so there can be improperly identified stones here and there.

Fancy jasper

Ocean jasper

Bloodstone

See what I mean?

The difference between them is, arguably, quite fine (on the ontological, philosophical level). The biggest difference is in their formation: jaspers are a sedimentary aggregate of a whole bunch of different things, while chalcedony (which is the mineral group bloodstone belongs to) is primarily a silicate. You can see the difference under a microscope: a jasper is microcrystaline while chalcedony is cryptocrystaline (this means that jasper has a slightly larger crystal structure and doesn't require as much magnification). Bloodstone should always streak a reddish brown in a mineral streak test, whereas a jasper might be brown, or it might be other colors.

Ideally, a bloodstone should be consistently green except for "splatters" here and there of red-orange, though sometimes there are streaks instead. If you are seeing bits of mauve, blue, or purple mixed in, it's likely a form of jasper instead of bloodstone. If it's green but the splatters are more yellow than red, that's known as "plasma." Bloodstone is very rarely color-enhanced, though like other stones it often has a finish that can be damaged by harsh detergents; like other stones, it should be cleaned with warm water.

Five Fandom Friday: My Favorite Things About Winter

This is a prompt I can get behind! Winter might be my favorite season. Sweden has proper winters, at least theoretically; they keep getting warmer due to the effects of climate change. So, while they're still here, a truncated list of why I love (Swedish) winter!

1. Weather that's made up its mind. I like seasons that don't make a bollocks of it; they know what they are and so do you. Winter? It's cold. You can expect it to be cold, or at least below a certain threshold; you don't have to guess about what to wear when you leave the house (if you leave at all, which brings me to #2). 

2. No one judges you for staying inside. I love summer, of course: swimming, my birthday, the endless Swedish days, and of course (for some years of my life, at least) no school. But when it gets nice outside, people judge you for wanting to stay inside out of the heat to read books or play games. In the wintertime, no one really blames you for staying inside. Our apartment is right above a grocery store and a pizza place. The last 6 weeks I've had off from Swedish class have been glorious because I haven't had to venture more than an elevator ride and a short walk in the outdoors.

3. The way that snow-covered trees look. They have the same appeal as fractals or as silicate crystals for me. Order and structure, yet chaos and fragility.

Pascal Terjan

4. Glögg. Or mulled wine. It warms you from the inside out. It usually starts appearing on shelves around the same time as Julmust, but I don't like Julmust half as much.

5. It's cold enough to properly cuddle JV. My boyfriend absolutely radiates heat, which is why we joke about him being Lord Xenu. Okay, the inside joke has a lot of complicated and not particularly funny-to-anyone-else steps, but the point is he has that nickname because he is WARM. Sharing a bed with someone who is WARM in the summer is a challenge, though mostly for JV. (My nickname is "ice cold killah" for reasons more straightforward than the ones behind "Lord Xenu.") In the winter, though, it's the best ever.

What's winter like where you are? Like it, love it, indifferent?

Trek Thursday: The Alternative Factor

#43: The Alternative Factor.

In case you forgot: A madman named Lazarus is determined to be at the center of some weird magnetic nonsense going down. The Enterprise beams him aboard and he tells them that he is in hot pursuit of another person, a creature capable of destroying all life as we know it. Turns out Lazarus is after a parallel version of himself, only the parallel version of himself (Anti-Lazarus, I guess?) isn't really out to destroy anything. He volunteers to stay locked in combat with Lazarus in some safety corridor for all eternity, because if either one of them gets out both universes will be destroyed.

This episode seems to be nearly universally panned by fans, but despite all that I really, properly, almost like it. Hear me out.

The pacing on this episode is different from your standard TOS fare. Usually TOS lays out the problem in its entirety pretty early on and we watch our heroes try to figure out the solution. In "The Alternative Factor" it's clear that for the most part, no one really has any clear idea of what's going on, just some hazy hypotheses about matter and antimatter and a very clearly crazy man running around the Enterprise.

The pathos and drama is played just right, in my opinion; the episode doesn't really sink into melodrama. Lazarus is obviously a seriously unhinged individual and to be trapped with him for the rest of your life is a grim prospect. Whatever the rest of the episode, that part of it is handled with a deft touch.

But.

But.

If you called out Star Trek, especially TOS, on every instance of dodgy science, you wouldn't have much time to actually enjoy the show. I know that, and I'm not doing that here. All I ask out of the series, or at least a given episode, is consistency. For example, Spock asserts that if matter and antimatter meet, that means total annihilation. But that reaction is what fuels the Enterprise. There's not even a wink or a nod to this.

You can forgive such an obvious oversight, of course, by saying, "That part of the canon hadn't been developed yet." That's fair. But that still doesn't explain the fact that antimatter and matter interact (that being Anti-Lazarus and Lazarus) for multiple, protracted periods of time in this episode. If their meeting constitutes the end of the entire freaking universe, then how in the world are the writers defining "meeting"?

Should have been a much better episode than it ended up being. Sigh.

What I'm Reading: White Noise

Well, this one is at least a refreshing change from A House for Mr Biswas. More than that I don't feel equipped to say because White Noise reads like one long inside joke, with me far off in the distance. All the positive reviews on the covers describe it as hilarious; I'm not laughing. But maybe it'll all make sense in the end?

The writing is light and easy enough at any rate, and Delillo presents a nice little mystery with the experimental Dylar pills. That much, at least, I can grasp.

Read anything that made you feel stupid lately?

Button and Twine Period

No, that has nothing to do with uterus-related TMI. But I have been going through a button phase recently; if I were an art historian studying myself, I would call the work I've done lately a product of my "button and twine period." You know, like Picasso's Blue Period?

Anyway, I like the fun and casual look of these pieces, especially the multistrand ones, but they are a little too DIY/"I could make that so why should I buy it from you?" for me to list in the shop. But then again, I feel that way about almost everything I make because bead-stringing is the easiest thing in the world. (And the most expensive once you get hooked on the good stuff. Oy!)

All of the above are pi, of course. My go-to ~experimental number. (If you're confused by what I mean by saying these bracelets are pi, here's a little background.)

Five Fandom Friday: New Year's Fandom Resolutions

I'm not much of a New Year's resolutions person, even though New Year's is one of my favorite holidays. I like its secularism and its universality—almost every culture celebrates the end of one year and the beginning of the next, no matter what season the year begins and ends in. Resolutions seem like a way to set yourself up to fail, especially the way that most people use them. But between 101 in 1001 and my penchant for lists, it's not hard for me to come up with a few things I'd like to improve or accomplish in 2015. I think they're all pretty achievable!


1. Get caught up on my Wonder Woman lore.

I've never been a fan of superhero comics, at least in the more or less "traditional" style of comics from the Golden through Bronze ages. My favorite superhero treatments usually have some kind of twist to them, whether it's the straightforward "what if" scenario of Red Son, or the crazy mindfuck that is Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol. But with a proper Wonder Woman movie coming out in 2017, I need to get ready! Because there is no question for me: I have to see a Wonder Woman movie on opening day.


2. Learn and master one new jewelry skill.

Jewelry is my original fandom, y'all, and there's no way around it. I'm thinking about seeing what I can do with hemp twine. It doesn't require any extra space or equipment like some of my other jewelry goals do, plus I have a crapload of hemp (though not too many beads that fit it). I think there are a couple ways of incorporating numbers into hemp work, too. 

I'm worried about how marketable this particular "look" is, especially with the sort of crowd that would be interested in math jewelry, but you never know until you try, right?


3. Photograph at least half of my backlog. 

No brainer. This might get easier, though, as one of my friends here in Stockholm is a photographer and I wouldn't mind working out a deal to outsource that responsibility because I HATE PHOTOGRAPHING MY WORK.

4. Finish Papers, Please

Self explanatory. But it can take me a long time to finish a game, especially if I like it. It sounds counterintuitive, but the reality is I just don't want the experience to end! Although in the case of Papers, Please, it's also a question of the game not always being a pleasant experience.

5. Finish Ni no Kuni

I've finished the story months ago, but I still have a long way to go towards 100% completion. And I'm nothing if not a completionist.

Do you make resolutions? Why or why not? If you do, do you mind sharing yours?

Happy New Year!

No Trek Thursday today, being that it's New Year's Day and all. JV and I rang in the new year with The Big Lebowski, fireworks, and The Three Amigos. It was low-key and fun, and I hope you all enjoyed your festivities as much as we did! Here's a picture of The Great Wave off Kanagawa for no reason at all except that I'd love to have a dress with this print: