Gemstones: Cat's Eye and link to gemstone guide

I recently turned 40 and I remember way back when we didn't have as many books as people do now. They were sort of a luxury. Lots of kids had story books. My favorite book--A Gemstone and Mineral identification book. I just loved the pictures of all the pretty rocks!

So when starting to work with beads I became very interested in (again) all these neat semi-precious, precious, rocks, what-have-you and trying to see what I could play with next on my limited budget. The most recent fun thing is cat's eye or chrysoberyl. Very cheap ones.  Here is the link to see one and a picture of a really expensive kind. The link also is the gem guide that is my new best friend. Mostly expensive things but it takes the place of the book I lost.

http://www.gemselect.com/chrysoberyl-cats-eye/chrysoberyl-cats-eye.php

These are fascinating. Here is a necklace/choker and earrings I made with royal blue ones.

Here is another great website with more information than pictures and some great info about Chrysoberyls like this :

"Scientists have discovered that very fine inclusions, deposited in the stone, are responsible for this fascinating phenomenon. The incident light is reflected off them, so that a bright strip of light appears, running perpendicular to the inclusions, similar to the eye of a feline predator. When the stone is turned, this strip seems to glide away across the surface of the stone. In technical terminology this phenomenon is known as 'chatoyancy', which comes from the French 'chat' (for cat) and 'oeil' (for eye). Whilst chrysoberyls lacking the cat's eye effect are mostly faceted, cat's eyes are always cut into cabochons, since only tall, rounded shapes render the line of the eye properly visible."

http://gemstone.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=1&Itemid=69 

Happy drooling!