11 October 2019

Stones

In our house there are plenty of stones. They are souvenirs of places I or we have been and they were all free. Most of the stones were picked up on beaches but I also have stones from the summits of Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon - the tallest mountains in Scotland, England and Wales.

There's a stone from Maine and another from California, a stone from Iceland and another from Easter Island. Another from New Zealand. However, I am sorry to say that I cannot remember where many of the stones came from. Perhaps I should have labelled them as soon as I brought them home.

I don't just pick up any old stone and I never really plan to collect one. It just happens.

Stones are not made from plastic. They are perfectly natural. They have mostly been around since long before the time of the dinosaurs. Some of them came from the bottoms of primordial seas, some spurted from ancient volcanoes, some were carried by ice and some have been rubbed or shaped by the ocean over several millennia. These are invariably the sort of stones you will find on beaches all over the planet.































Last week, as I walked by The North Sea - along the beach from Whitby to Sandsend, I picked up the four stones that illustrate this post. I imagine that the holes were caused by pieces of grit that ground out tiny hollows before equally tiny pebbles continued that grinding process. The exact circularity of one or two of the holes is, I think, quite amazing.

Do you also have some souvenir stones?

44 comments:

  1. You beat me to it. I was going to ask if you knew what made the perfect holes.
    No lol this time.
    Briony
    x

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    1. Drat! What do I have to do to get an lol? lol x

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  2. I wonder if the holes were made by cave people to wear in a chain as necklaces as a precursor to twinsets and pearls. ;)

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    1. You have a vivid imagination ADDY! I wonder what the cavewomen wore?

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  3. I have a piece of granite about 5” square which I picked up from the beach in Slapton Ley, Devon, in 1985. One edge of it is unweathered and shows up all the different minerals which are the constituent parts of granite (I did geology ‘o’ level, probably not long after the rock was formed). If I were a geology teacher it would be the perfect piece to pass round the class to illustrate granite. As I’m not a geology teacher it has been used as a book end for the last 30 or more years, but I look at it nearly every day.

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    1. There is solace to be found in stones isn't there Philip? That stone has probably been your most faithful companion.

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  4. I have an olive wood bowl I bought in Italy filled with small, interesting stones from my travels--I love the juxtaposition of the wood's striations and those of the stones. Also collected very small pieces of driftwood and a few slightly larger stones that sit on my mantel.

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    1. I think they are the best souvenirs Mary. Natural with deep history.

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  5. Lots of stones from many different places in our house too, but none with holes. I don't like stones with holes. Psychoanalysis please.

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    1. After exhaustive research, I am able to conclude that you are trypophobic. Unlike you, I have no problem at all with little holes. In fact I am rather fond of them.

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    2. Thank you Dr. Pudding.

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  6. I, too, have stones about that I have collected and like you- I have no idea where some of them came from. Same with seashells. A few I definitely know their origins, but some I do not. I also have a vase of sea glass from Cozumel. It is one of my favorite things.

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  7. Interesting holey stones.
    We have a chunk of quartz dug up from the garden. It had been split in half and has a brown coloured outer layer and the inside a sparkly, off white. The shape and colours reminded me of a cut loaf of bread. It is on our windowsill alongside a piece of white coral plucked from a beach in Queensland.

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    1. Maybe you can show your adoring public a picture or two of your bread loaf stone.

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    2. Perhaps tomorrow. I'll save you a slice.

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  8. I do, some of which I've had for many, many years! I should do a post!

    Those are some AMAZING rocks you found, with the holes in them. I had a friend in Morocco who used to collect rocks with holes, which she would turn into jewelry. (If they were small enough to be worn.) I think they're supposed to be good luck.

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    1. There were many other stones like that on the beach. I did not have to search very hard.

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  9. I collect stones as well, from everywhere I go. I have jars full of stones and seashells and sea glass scattered about. I collect heart shaped stones which are more abundant than you would think. The best beach I ever found though for heart shaped stones was at Winchelsea Beach where my auntie lived for a few years. I collected so many heart shaped stones that visit I had to limit myself to about a dozen to bring home.

    I love the fact that your stones have holes in them. I've never seen that before.

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    1. Winchelsea? That's where Spike Milligan is buried. Maybe you are the only person who finds heart shaped stones Lily. Love messages from The Earth.

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  10. I just googled stones with holes in them. They're called hag stones and are considered lucky. You lucky man:)

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    1. Yes Lily, but what is a hag? Perhaps you could look that up too.

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  11. I have a bottle of stones green ginger wine in the cupboard. Does that count?

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    1. Just one bottle? Your neighbours say you put dozens of empties in your wheelie bin.

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  12. I've got a lovely collection of hag stones threaded on wire, they hang on my greenhouse - bringing me good luck and protection from witches for everything I grow there !

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    1. I found several hag stones in Suffolk when walking near the lighthouse on Orford Ness.

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  13. Those perfect round holes are amazing. I have some crystals that I collected as a child. We used to go to a mountain in Arkansas that had many crystals growing within it. I loved collecting them.

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    1. Stones can take us back to other times.

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  14. Yes...I do have a couple, and I also have a few sea shells. I can't bring myself to throw them away. I'm not sure if it is because I have a deep, well-hidden superstition about doing so that I'm not aware about...but with me they shall remain!

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    1. Where did you get them?

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    2. At the supermarket, of course!!

      No! Where do you think I would've gotten them????

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    3. Err...I was hoping for precision - like Noosa Heads maybe or Hinchinbrook Island or Turkey Island or Dundowran Beach.

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    4. Various areas, Yorkie...various beaches at which I lived. A couple from Noosa/Sunshine Beach, the islands (Hinchinbrook and Newry)...and dare I say it....from when I was living at Yorkeys Knob...a northern beach suburb of Cairns in Far North Queensland!

      You know I was just joking around in my response above! :)

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    5. Yorkey's Knob is very popular isn't it? It is easy to understand why. Yorkey's Knob is beautiful. "Visitors arriving at Cairns Airport have various transport options to get them to Yorkey's Knob including taxi, shuttle bus, hire car or limousine transfers."

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    6. I was just drawn to it...

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  15. In all our years at our cottage at the shore, I never found a stone with a hole in it. Yours have the holes so perfectly defined they look man made. Nature is amazing, innit?

    I do have a few small pebbles and shells from the shore, and pieces of coal as well. They wash ashore in some areas. This is a coal mining region so I assume the coal is from seams that run out under the Northumberland Strait. I used to collect sea glass (like Ms Moon) but the crafters in our region have picked the beaches clean! After Hurrican Dorian last month, I heard that lots of new glass had washed up but I didn't go hunting it. By the way, in case Ms Moon doesn't see your question, sea glass is bits of glass from bottles, etc. that have broken in the water and been ground by the action of the water and sand and rocks into smooth edged pieces. Usually green or white here; the deep blue is highly sought after as it's much scarcer.

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    1. Thanks for that explanation Jenny-O. It took me jut a few minutes of walking along to spot the four stones shown.

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  16. I'm not stone guy but my Dad was nuts about agates. He had a polisher and spent much time at it. I don't know what happened to the agates he had.

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  17. I also love stones.......there are quite a lot of them around the house. I also can't remember where most of them came from, though I think the big one in the downstairs loo was from a beach at Alnmouth. I have a small, thin black one with a hole in it on the kitchen windowsill. One of my favourites is a large chunk of flint, about 6 inches high, that has a hole right through it. ( It used to be in my fish tank)

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    1. It is reassuring to discover that I am not alone in my love of stones.

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  18. I'm a stone 'picker-upper'. I love stones. They amaze me. I have them all over and perched on each other.

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    1. See my comment to Frances (above). Ditto!

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  19. I too have a small collection of stones/shells on my windowsill. The best: one I picked up while walking with my beloved dog Clancy, and another from my dad's garden that I picked up while I was helping him plant some flowers. Both Clancy and my dad are gone now, so they hold memories dear. Sometimes a stone is more than just a stone...

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