Lavender Fields of Youth Earrings

Bee’s Lavender Delight

At the cooler end of the light spectrum, bees are supreme. Blues, violets, and purples are the colors of delight. Plus, if you can imagine, bees naturally see a color most of us can’t see, ultraviolet. Ultraviolet is a super purple. It’s a color that bees are psyched about seeing because in flowers, purple and ultra-purple let the bee know exactly where to land to collect the best pollen.

Many of the pieces we create at Cross are built to endure decades of wear, built to withstand almost anywhere you want to go and anything you choose to do. Some pieces like this necklace and earrings are more delicate…exquisitely beautiful. The gold links threaded through the gems are light, delicate, appropriate to the size of the gems. The finished look is light, airy, and best worn selectively.

The Lavender Purple Mystery Earrings

I’ve puzzled over the color purple most of my adult life. Purple is the last color most of us can see. It’s at the other end of the color spectrum. There is something beyond purple. Ultraviolet would be a possible name, but that actually is something we can “sort of” see with special lighting.

The Challenge Was
Fording Two Rain Swollen Streams in Trucks
Following a More Dangerous Route,
A Rutted Path up Over a Mountain.

My son and I went to an amethyst mine on the Maine – New Hampshire border in late October one year. We took the truck. They told us we’d be traveling back roads, farm fields, wood roads, fording streams with no bridges, and in the last stretch climbing the side of a mountain.

My truck has high clearance and 4-wheel drive. They said we’d travel in convoy with other trucks and a gem mining reality TV film crew. It felt like an adventure from the Out of Africa movie, minus the rhinos and hippos.

It had rained for a week. There was mud everywhere. We met the group at a restaurant up in the mountains. The men were all serious, they plotted a more dangerous but dryer pathway up the backside of the mountain and down to the mine. They finally concluded we would ford the streams and take our chances on being swept downstream to waiting hippos.

The day was clear, with full sun, and blue sky. Most of the trees of late fall had lost their leaves. The air was cool, low forties, with a slight breeze out of the north. We’d dressed warmly, and had a full tank of gas, and sandwiches for lunch.

I had seen a box of amethyst crystals from this mine the week before. It was an historic gem mining location. They had been working the location for several months. The team was psyched to have a TV crew and a jeweler with a history of serious marketing onboard. I was there for two primary reasons: I’m curious, and I’m interested as a scientist in the color beyond purple. The color most of the human population can’t see.

Amethyst crystals are interesting. Many, at their base, start off colorless and as the eye travels up the base, the purple color intensifies until you reach the top, the point, the peak and it becomes a dark, rich grape color. The tantalizing part, the mystery, there is a color we can’t see just beyond the color purple and it’s not Ultraviolet, but it’s there.

Naturalists explain it’s a color that bees can see, but we can’t and this beyond purple color is captured in some flowers, and may even be present in certain shades of purple flowers…it’s there, but we can’t see it. We look right at things with color beyond purple and see something, it’s just not what a bee might see as it buzzes toward a flower.

Why all this discussion of hippos and bees and gem mining? Flowers are delicate. Their colors are temporary. Gems are millions of years old. Their colors are fixed and I thought at an amethyst mine I could see purple gems in place and might be able to identify portions of crystals that possess the color humans can’t see. Once I arrived at the mine, I climbed down into the pit. I studied what they were finding. Nothing leaped out as conclusive on the purple mystery question.

So, we’ve taken three steps back and focused on three distinct gems that lead up to the mystery color:

Blue Sky Topaz……Pastel Blue

Tanzanite……………Blue-Violet

Amethyst……………Grape-Violet

These are the colors at the end of the color spectrum. They are cool calming colors, relaxing colors, colors to sit easily next to, colors that won’t shout, colors that the mind, heart, and soul are happy to be near.

Wear these and be cool with it. Wear these and be the coolest lady in the room. Fourteen gems and then two big pear shape amethyst at the bottom.

These pieces, with their cool three-gem line-up, are more beautiful and precious than you could ever imagine. Wear these pieces and the room temperature will feel 10° more comfortable. Wear these pieces and everyone will know you have your color story together.

The amethyst and topaz are “World” gems, and although we mine both of these gems in Maine, all three gems in this necklace come from wide-ranging locations all over the world.

Blue Sky Topaz

The Blue Zones of Happiness

Blue is the color of health and well-being. Blue is the color of youth and vitality. Blue is the color of peace and happiness.

Earth has seven Blue zones. Seven places where people live longer with vim and vigor. A Blue Zone is not just about more time, it’s more time with a true quality of life. The Blue Zone mindset is about time for discovery, wisdom and work.

Blue Zones are not merely magic places on the globe. Rather, they are places with a population of people who believe in wellness, people who never stop thinking, participating or creating. They subscribe to a lifetime of art and imagination, a lifetime of discovery.

People who live to be 100 don’t simply stop at 65. they have 10, 20, 30 years of additional active participation. They have more to contribute.

Do you have to pick up and move to a Blue Zone for an extra 20 years? Do you have to sell your house, say goodbye to your friends and family? Do you move to Japan, Costa Rica or Sardinia and not see your grandchildren grow up to achieve an extra 20?

A Blue Zone is not about place, although these places exist within our world. Blue Zone is really about attitude, belief and philosophy. Yes, it would be nice to live in a place where everyone lived a very long time. Blue Zone living is easier than you might imagine. It’s a decision you make, a decision that exists inside of you. It’s a shift of your consciousness.

Is Blue Sky, Blue Zone a gem of magic? Yes-maybe-no, It is if you want it to be. It is magic if you choose it to be. It is magic if you decide, because living the Blue Zone life simply makes sense.

Blue Topaz is an amazing gem. It occurs in various shades of blue. At Cross, we choose the prettiest shades of pastel blue, they are the colors in the middle. Our Blue Sky Topaz is the third hardest gem after diamond which means it’s highly resistant to scuffing and scratching. Blue Topaz has a high refractive index (jeweler talk) which means that when a gem is cut properly, it’s the most sparkly bright brilliant pastel blue gem in nature!

Your new Blue Topaz is with you every day to remind you of the guiding principles of what is truly important.

The World’s Happiest Places

These are the seven places in the world where the longest lived happiest people live.