My absolute unit of a Grand Master award arrived!

I kept trying to get a decent picture of it to show the lovely colours of all the different stones.1 I tried dim light, bright light, sunlight… All the things. None of them conveyed its true glory—and sheer size. It’s well over 30 cm tall, maybe 11 cm square, and its weight is not trivial (though only about half what it might be if it were made of glass).

Then I lugged it into my office and stuck it on my desk while I decide what to do with it. Serendipitously I put it in front of a padded mailer (which I’m about to sent out to the winning bid on one of my Locus pledges) and that made everything look much nicer.

So then I futzed about a bit more and finally got a picture of the lapis sphere. It’s huge—at least squash-ball size—and in front of the buff envelope it looked its proper colour. Also remarkably like our planet turning serenely in space.

So here you go: my Damon Knight Memorial planet, Lapis Earth.

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