Category: News

The Tualatin Valley Rock and Gem Club likes to keep members informed on the news in our industry about earth sciences, club activities, community activities, and news we can use for our hearts made of stone – melted by our passion for rocks and gems.

This category features such newsworthy items.

If you are a member of our club and would like to submit newsworthy bits to this site or the newsletter, please let us know at our regular meetings or contact us.
For more information on Tualatin Valley Rock and Gem activities, check out our events category and calendar. If you would like more information on rock collecting, identification, and resources, check out our Education page and Earth Sciences topics.

If you would like to become a member, please join us. If you have any questions or need more information, please contact us so we may help.

November and December Meetings

We are coming close to the end of the year, as fall is here and winter will come. It has been a good one making new friends and meeting new faces over this year. We worked at the Portland Regional Gem and Mineral Show and it was heart warming to see the enthusiasm in the people that came through who shared our love for the earth’s beauty.

The Meeting for November 14th will include a talk on the varieties of Quartz given by Julian Grey Curator of the Rice North West Museum of Rocks and Minerals. How many varieties can you think of? I bet that subject is way broader than you might think. Can anyone recognize the name of quartz in this picture is below? (Hint, think of New York).

businessh The November 28th meeting of course is Thanksgiving and we can count in our thanks all the things that the rocks and minerals have brought us, but there will be no meeting.

In the Month of December we will have our annual holiday dinner with good food, fun surprises and sharing. More information on that to come, but that too will be our only meeting for the month.

Sept. & Oct. Meeting Notice

The September 12th meeting will have a movie on the topic of petrified wood and will relate to some of the oddities on what happens when it is formed so members are encouraged to bring their oddities or any types of petrified wood to share, discuss where it came from and or what makes it special.

Show Announcement for October – Please share from website and facebook.

Show times are Friday & Saturday 10-6, Oct. 11 & 12 Sunday 10-5, Oct 13. Come and join us for a great show!

Press link to go to the Regional website for more information, a map to Jackson Armory (near PDX airport) and for members to fill out show exhibit application. Portland Regional Gem and Mineral Show link

Many of us at Tualatin Valley Gem Club will be volunteering at this show that will help support our club expenses and we will be out at the Jackson Armory on Thursday, Oct. 10th setting up the show to open on the 11th.

No meeting at the senior center for TVGC on October 10th. We wish to encourage members to volunteer.

If TVGC members volunteer for a period of time at Kid’s corner, silent auction, admissions, etc., members will get free admission to the show for the entire weekend. Many hands make light work, meet new people and have fun.

August Meeting Topic and New Events

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The picture above is an extreme close up of a Fire Agate done by Joe Cantrell. This image above can not be copied, reproduced or shared without permission as Joe Cantrell does this professionally. He will be sharing with us some of his absolutely fascinating images of macro photography of rocks at our August 8th meeting. Prepare to be amazed!!

Please take note of all the new events and meeting changes and field trip announcements for June and July in the previous post as this has been updated after it’s initial posting.

Also note meeting location has changed for June 27th (4th Thursday in June) is now at Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals at 7pm for a very special club event with Sharleen Harvey daughter of the Rice family and co-founder of the museum.

June & July – new topics and events. Meeting change for June 27th

Click on the calendar button on our menu for new and upcoming events and meeting topics as there will be more events to come soon.

June and July have new meeting topics and many events. We have more in the works, as well so please check the event calendar for any new additions.

June 13th Meeting – we will have a guest Barbara Kennedy from Artisans of Metal and Thread click the underlined link for more information on classes she offers as she has her own shop in Tigard Oregon. She will come and talk to us about Metal clay making as we can incorporate it into our jewelry making. We will learn what it is, how it works, and what you can do with it as you incorporate it with gemstones and more. Pictured below is an example of silver clay metal this editor made, a silver horse shoe to be incorporated with a malachite horse head.

June 15th Saturday FIELD TRIP – Richardson’s Rock Ranch to dig for our state rock, those beautiful Thunder eggs. Please contact president Casey Truman to register / give notification of attendance.

June 27 Meeting – Important Notification! We will not have this meeting at the Forest Grove Senior Center, Instead we will meet at The Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals at 7:00 pm. This meeting will give us the opportunity to listen and talk to Sharleen Harvey, oldest daughter of the Rice family and co-founder of the museum to hear or ask questions on the history of the house and exhibits.

July 11th meeting – Cindy Yablok will be speaking on the topic of wire wrapping gemstones. She will be talking about different types of wire wrap and design process as well as tips for executing your own design ideas and hand outs for online resources for more ideas and tips. Pictured below is an example of her wire wrap work.

July 20th will be our club picnic. Time is from 1- 4 pm in Gaston OR at the Hunt’s house. Provided will be Hot dogs but please bring a side dish of salad, fruit or dessert and folding chair.

Up coming meetings for March, April & May

As we are waiting for warmer weather to come, we have a few more months to go before we head into collecting weather. Hopefully, we can also have some more interactive time at our Fourth Thursday of the month meetings (remember to meet us in the back room of the senior center at 7pm). On March 28th, it would be wonderful to have our members and guests share some of their favorite subjects related to our hobby. Therefore, we would like to encourage all to bring a favorite book or magazine in with them, or even just a website tip that you might like to share with the group so that we can learn more about each other and help us focus on favored topics for presentational meetings.

Fossil Ammonites from all over the world

Our next presentation meeting for April 11th, will be a discussion on Ammonite Fossils given by Greg Carr. His specialties are on the subjects of fossils, fossil preparation and meteorites. You may remember hearing him talk to us in the past, about his discovery and work on the Oregon Thalattosaur. He will be bringing some of his collection and we may also learn about fossil localities for Ammonites in Oregon.

Our presentation for May 9th will be about the historic Missoula Floods through the Columbia River Gorge, given by Jim Urbaniak. Which is a highly praised talk about the fascinating geologic event which shaped our area into what it is today.

Thank you to Garret Romaine, author of Rock Hounding Guide books for March meeting presentation.

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We enjoyed listening to Garret Romaine speak to our group about Gem Trails of Northern California, who told us more about some of the newer and more desirable spots for rock hounding in his new book. His guides our always updated and have some fun places to investigate with a few side notes along the way to see, as he mentioned during the meeting. I strongly encourage all to use these wonderful guide books as they head out for the summer on their trips.

The pictures above are just a few of his books, he has also written Geology Lab for Kids, Rock Hounding Idaho and more.

Gem Show 2019 Success

We would like to thank all who made this show a wonderful success! This includes our volunteers, advertising supporters, friendly dealers, Dick Pugh from the Cascade Meteorite Laboratory and of course our visitors.

We hope that the community had a good time, found some wonderful treasures and had a chance to learn or discover something new about our amazing world of gems, rocks, minerals, meteorites and fossils. Our volunteers were very dedicated and hard working. We had a little advertising help from Oregonlive, Katu and Forest Grove News Times. All the 3 day Raffle prize winners have been contacted. Each of our displays had something unique to show and I am sure the votes where broad so thank you to all that voted on the displays as well.

Volunteer at our nicely decorated kid’s corner

More on Meteorites! Coming to our show March 8,9 & 10

We enjoyed having a presentation on meteorites and we had several different types to touch! We learned about the classification of meteorites from our presenter Dick Pugh from the Cascadia Meteorite Laboratory at PSU. Bring your questions and your meteorites or your meteor – wrongs.

If you missed our meeting to learn about meteorites Dick Pugh will have a table at our show where you can bring your suspect meteorites and ask him questions.

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This is an example of a Stony Iron Meteorite slice called a Pallasite.