Give me a Break!

Hopefully everyone has been reading some of my earlier posts while I was on a break...literally!  I possibly fractured or bruised (couldn't tell from the x-rays) my ribs in a minor (very minor) car accident and I have been out of commission for a bit.  It seems that your ribs are integral to most of your body's movement (who knew!).  Anyway, it's been uncomfortable to do much for any amount of time.  The medicine that I took at night, which I am grateful for, left me groggy a lot of the day.  So, here I am back again!  Able to move almost quite normally.  (I will be using the groggy thing for awhile to mask any age-related forgetfulness!)

So, speaking of breaks ....

While taking a short walk on the beach with my husband (he did the "bend-and-pick-up" for me), we found a lovely piece of frosted treasure with some lines in it.  My husband said it would make a great piece of jewelry, but I hesitated.  You see, the lines in some of the glass that I find look like cracks and I'm not sure they would be as fascinating to someone buying a jewelry item as they are to me.  Most of these cracks are surface but I can't tell how deep they are and I'm not sure how stable they would be.   Here is an enhanced photo of the piece to show the detail.


Aqua shard with many lines of "crizzling"


This crizzling in glass is the effect of weathering.  Wet glass that is exposed to freezing can sometimes form surface cracks.  These surface cracks are straight lines that over time (wetting and freezing) can actually fracture the glass into triangular shapes. 

Beach glass group with weathering cracks

A large piece can fracture  over and over again creating smaller and smaller pieces.  These are tumbled in the sand by waves and eventually end up smooth triangle shaped shards of beach glass.  It will take 30-50 years of tumbling to round off the edges of these newly broken pieces.  This fact always amazes me!


These are small, kind of sharp-shaped triangles that have had their edges smoothed.

Small, squat triangles of cobalt beach glass

 These are longer triangles.


Long thin triangles, with smoothed edges.






















But these triangles have been worn smooth and rounded!  Probably some early medicine bottles that have been breaking and tumbling for 50 years.



Triangles that have been smoothed over time

 So, you can see why the triangle is the most common shape that I find.   Short and fat or long and thin, these triangles have a history we can only guess at!


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So lovely to have this nice support group of beautiful followers who take the time to send a kind word!  :)  Thanks all for your concern, I am doing much better and will be out beach-combing this weekend!







Beach finds