The Stone Circle and @KatrionaWrites in 2023

 

 

Looking back, this blog began in 2018. It's now 2023. This might be the most constant writing work I ever had. 

Hi guys! Happy New Year! I'm still here, still working hard. 

Today I enjoyed reading back through these pages and updating them. They document from when I started driving to January 2021, which means I didn't post here for a whole year... Sorry about that. 

So Fox and I began the Stone Circle website together in April 2021. Now that we are officially up and running, I do sell most of the rocks I find from hunting. I keep a few for myself and pass the others on. Although Fox is no longer with us (he moved back to Germany), doag and I are still going strong. Kai is getting a little old for the hunts now, they exhaust him. Most of the time it's just me on a trip now. 

TSC has sold Scottish rocks to Australians, to Indians, to almost every state of America, Italy, France, Spain, and more. There are Scottish rocks which I found in rivers or hill paths all over the planet. After Fox left I had a wobble about whether to continue or not, but the support of our long term clients made my mind up for me. 

The Stone Circle: The Scottish Self-Collected Crystal Shop 

What's new with TSC? We have an Instagram page where you can follow and watch all the new rocks that I find. I have a saw now, so i can cut up those nodules and look inside. I have a rock tumbler, so I slowly polish up the rocks I find, a small batch at a time. I still hand polish but less often. Time is a big factor. I have a few new locations and know what I am doing a bit better. Nevertheless, I do still get stuck. I would like to put myself through a geology course, again it's a matter of time.

I have the TSC website up and running now, and I do still sell rocks but not on Ebay, I am on Etsy nowadays. I ship Scottish crystals that I self-collect from all over the country, polish myself, and sell worldwide. TSC shop does ship internationally so don't be afraid to visit a .co.uk site if you are not British. We are on Facebook as well, so drop us a follow to stay tuned.

The Stone Circle has become popular on TikTok, I am eternally grateful for the 13.7k+ followers who learn about rocks with me. We are on YouTube too, and have gone viral once or twice on both platforms. Come and follow us and you might see videos of the rock you are buying as I find it.

Katriona E MacMillan, Freelance Writer

Why do I have no time? Because I am working full time as a freelance writer and have been since October 2019. I am moving into my fourth year. It absolutely has not been an easy ride, but I don't think I could go back to kitchen work now that I know how to make money out of nothing. Even the slow months with little cash are better than standing for 12 hours with no breaks 6 days a week. Especially on my painful feet.

What do I do all day? I receive requests from clients to write blog posts for their businesses. As well as blog posts, I write copy, which is the literature that comes with a business. Usually this is online material like home pages, about us stories, or even leaflets and infographics. Over the years I have covered thousands of topics. If you need to know what to do after a car accident to get maximum compensation, or what the best Lay-Z-Spa to buy is, I'm your girl.

But when the dinner bell chimes and the daytime work goes away, the writer in me really comes out. I have a fair number of short stories in anthologies all over the place, so I recently started publishing my own. So far we have "Bananas", about a botanist trying to grow plants on an isolated space station, and "The Portrait Artist", in which a Victorian corpse doll maker prepares a body for post-mortem photographs. Yes, both are horror. One Sci-Fi, one Historic. My website has even more free work on it if you want to take a look. I'm a modern writer, I know that a link is worth as much as a poem. It's a weird world.

I regularly write and release poetry. I am putting together a collection but I write in multiple categories. This means I have 40 poems across three and a half collections. I don't want each collection to be 10 pages long, so give me a little more time. Stay tuned for "Gen Z Could Save The World" and other delightful poems. You can watch some of these for yourself on Tiktok. I do fun stuff, mental health awareness and tips, I do beautiful places and a lot of environmental poetry.

Other work includes the 5/6 books of the Dark Science Series which are now published. When I started this blog in 2018 I was only 3 in. I've since reworked the first few books so that it all aligns. I am 270 pages into the final book in Dark Science: Oleander. It was only supposed to be a three book series but I love how it turned out. With character driven writing, you just need a loose idea of your plot points and then you let the characters push the story with how they would react. It ended up a longer road than I expected but a far richer story for it.

I'm going to miss them when they are gone.

What This Year Has in Store

I aim to continue finding new locations for Scottish crystals, minerals, rocks and fossils. The Stone Circle will keep going as long as I can. As for writing, I will still be picking up the pen when I am on my deathbed. I already have 10k words on the book which will follow Dark Science. This one is set in a research facility in the Arctic. It came to me in a dream (I have always wanted to say that).

I'm going to finish Dark Science either this year or early next year, and I will continue to release inspirational/mental health based/emo poetry on TikTok for all of you to enjoy. I hope you all come back for the occasional update. There is a blog on my personal website you can follow for more, or find me on Facebook or Insta. 

They come for the rocks but they stay for the stories. I am A OK with that. 

Katie.

Where to Sell Rocks?

This is the briefest blog ever. I am in the process of setting up an Etsy shop as a switch from Ebay (whose fees are making selling rocks a little pointless).

If you came here to look at rocks then head to Etsy by following this link. If not - carry on. Forget I said anything. Also, I highly recommend reading the one about Wilsontown. It's a nice place. Bit windy though.

Please enjoy this discarded book cover photo while you are here.

Rock picking in scotland

One of my favourite passtimes is to go out into this fabulous wilderness that surrounds me and retrieve mineral samples. This started as a lifelong interest in crystals, their healing power and their downright prettiness and has led me to some astonishing natural landscapes in the short year I have spent on it so far.

The photograph to the right is actually from a public park as you enter Kilsythe from the east. Dog (Kai) and I climbed to the top of the cliff face to look for rocks. This is the view from the top. There were some beautiful views but no visible quartz veins or other evidence of good veins.

Although this location wasn't successful the areas both north and south of where I live are littered with good finds.

Glencrieff Mine

The location to the left is Glencrieff Mine that lies just outside of Wanlockhead, the highest village in Scotland and home to the Lead Mining Museum. They call this part of Scotland "God's Treasure House" and do so with good reason.

There are three main veins that dissect Scotland and are of geological interest. The first dissects along the Southern Uplands range, the second along the Tyndrum band and the third can be found north again, this time up as far as Helmsdale. Understand that these veins run all the way across the country and are not limited to those areas.

This Calcite formed on hardened dirt

This means that all of these areas where gold is found is actually also prime crystal picking territory. The Calcite crystal sample to the right actually came from the mine pictured above. Calcite grows in absolute abundance here. You can't throw a stone without finding that stone is made of Calcite! These crystals are often growing on or around rock and are usually combined with other minerals from the area, such as Pyrite and Galena, which is a deep blue-grey when found in this locale.

Calcite Crystal from Wanlockhead, Scotland

The Calcite crystals themselves are mostly white and off-white. Some are yellow and some are stained red while some are growing from Galena leading to a beautiful silver blue hue on the surface crystal.

I learned early on that the make-up of Calcite means it will bubble when you put acid on it. This didn't stop me leaving a few pieces in vinegar to see what would happen. Within moments the vinegar turns black and murky as it starts to dissolve the dirt molecules. Unfortunately it doesn't stop there, and it will move on to destroying any aged calcite crystals that are breaking down already. Ultimately you will be left with only the strongest of the crystals and even these will be coated with a powdery dusting of dissolved calcium.

Possible Pyromorphite from Wanlockhead, Scotland

 

Interestingly, if you put quartz into acid it won't bubble. So if you ever find yourself with an unknown clear crystal formation and you pop it into vinegar the Calcite will produce small bubbles while the quartz will not! Not so common in this area but still found are Pyromorphite and reportedly Flourite, although I have yet to find any. Gold too, of course, though all I ever get in my pan is flour gold too fine to amount to anything.

My rock box, where crystals go to be cleaned

 

Traditionally, Scottish rocks consist mainly of agates. Agates are easily identifiable as multiple layers of colour all inside one stone. You do get sandstone like this too but it is very easy to tell the difference just by feel alone. An Agate found on the riverbed is likely to have the coloured layer exposed whereas one dug out of the fields is more likely to resemble a bumpy potato and be encased in some sort of stone. I haven't had the pleasure of digging up an agate yet.

Kai at Elie Bay

More recently we took a road trip out to Elie Bay in the hope of finding some of the elusive Elie Bay rubies. No joy yet, but we did come across this magnificent vein in the exposed bedrock. I believe it is quartz but I have yet to test it in acid. The theory of Elie Bay is to do with a deep red coloured seaweed dyes the rock red. I don't know if I have been searching the wrong locations or what but I haven''t given up on finding an Elie Ruby yet...

Lastly for today I think, Scotland is home to some of the most beautiful Morion quartz in the world. Me and doag are always out hunting the darkest pieces and actually sell some of it on Etsy. If you happen to be a crystal collector or someone with a tumbler who wants samples get in touch and we can work something out. In the meantime, enjoy the pictures and I will try to keep you up-to-date with my escapades... it all slows down here in the winter though... but I have a whole summer's worth of rocks to sort out meantime!

Morion Smokey Quartz from my collection

You can buy some of these lovely samples for yourself through the Stone Circle page.