Wearing the Green: A stone for St. Patrick's Day

I take part from time to time in the About.com jewelry making forum. Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day so a good few of the transatlantic members had posted something in honour of the day, something green of course. Having spent that day and half the previous one in bed, green about the gills, it was only today I got to post something green of my own.

This is a necklace that drew a lot of attention at Showcase, being a stone quite close to emerald in colour. I was quite taken aback at how many people singled it out as their favourite, knowing that green denotes a need for space and direction - perhaps people are especially looking for those in the current economic climate? Green is also the colour of the heart, and there is a lot of green, so I am told, in Irish hearts.

The stone is usually known as 'ruby in zoisite', sometimes as 'zoisite with ruby', zoisite being the green (and black) matrix in which ruby so often occurs. Interesting that ruby is the complementary opposite of the vivid green of the zoisite. It is a stone with quite large particles so it appears by turn a little rough and a little sparkly. I have loved this stone for a long time but had until recently shied away from making it up into jewellery, though I kept buying strands whenever I came across a nice quality of zoisite. The strands I used came from www.jewelweaver.com