I started cutting cabs about 6 years ago after collecting various jaspers while out hiking and traveling in Oregon. I wanted to know what I could do with them, and a local rock shop pointed me to lapidary classes at the senior center. I had a lot of fun and would regularly go work on rocks I’d found, but at the time I didn’t know much about the broader materials available in the lapidary world. Then I moved to Tucson in 2018 and became a member of the lapidary club here, cutting a couple times a month on stone I’d brought with me. Cutting was an infrequent hobby at that point, but when the pandemic happened I stopped cutting and started instead learning about rocks and gems online, and bought a bit of higher end rough to look forward to when things settled down. Turned out that took quite a lot longer than I’d hoped, but in early 2021 I started going and cutting again with a lot more knowledge about materials, but a bit rusty. But I quickly became a regular, and now spend 10-15 hours a week cutting, as well as running a lab and teaching others