I couldn’t have been more excited about this challenge - not for me, but for my son, who’s studying to be a geologist. Granted, he’s not quite 9, and his studying consists of reading his small stash of geology books over and over, but he’s quite insistent about his future. Conversations with him frequently involve matter of fact references to “when I’m a geologist,” he gets excited about the growth of crystals, and his favorite number is 5,972,000,000,000,000,000,000 (5 sextillion 972 quintillion) - the estimated weight in tons of the Earth.

I decided this challenge would make for a great collaboration between us - future geologist and knitter - and hurried into his room to tell him about it.

“Jeffrey, there’s a geology challenge for Nerd Wars this month. What should I--”

“Geodes.”

“Uh…what?”

“Make something with geodes. A sweater.”

“A sweater…with geodes.”

“Yeah. That’ll be cool.”

Well, alrighty then. First, however, I assigned him a task: I would do the designing and knitting; he would do the writing. We gathered together his Break Your Own Geodes kit, a hammer, safety glasses, a magnifying glass, and his computer, and got to work. I present to you Learning About Geodes, by Jeffrey:

This weekend we learned about geodes. 1st we broke open geodes. 2nd I made observations. Last I read a lesson website.

We got ready to break the geodes. 1st we got the hammer. Then we hit the geodes. Last we looked at the crystals with a magnifying glass.

I made some observations. I have 7 of them. These geodes are round and different colors. Some geodes are hollow 1 is almost solid. I can see crystals of all sizes, different colors, and also sparkly.

I learned how geodes are formed. 1st it starts with a bubble in rock. 2nd water comes and leaves minerals inside. Last the minerals make crystals.

Again, this weekend we learned about geodes. 1st we broke open geodes. 2nd I made observations. Last I read a lesson website.

And, our geode sweater.

The gray of the bottom represents the gray outside of many of the geodes we observed, while the purple and yellow yoke represents amethyst and citrine geodes like the ones pictured above (there were hints of both colors in Jeffrey’s geodes, but they were hard to photograph). The irregular jagged line where the gray meets the purple/yellow represent the jagged surface of the crystals where they grow into the hollow center of the geode.