Unfinished Umbrage

Welcome to Day Twenty-one of the A to Z Blogging Challenge! This is the day for the letter U, and I'm talking about Unfinished Umbrage, or the annoyance with unfinished projects!

Every crafter has a pile of unfinished projects, and sometimes it's hard to not get overwhelmed with them! With our different moves, certain projects got packed away in boxes, almost forgotten. Every now and then, going through a box, I'll find a project and wish I had finished it. Sometimes I do finish it! But usually... not. 

I made a new years resolution in 2011 or 2012 to finish a project as fully as I can before getting really involved in another, but it's really difficult, especially when real life gets in the way, or a deadline pops up!

Here are a few of my unfinished projects...

 Water under the bridge... a bridge I'm making! It's actually more finished than this but I don't have more recent photo at hand. But there's still work to be done - once I'm done shaping the blocks to the right slope, it all has to get painted a grayish color.

 These dice bags ended up a bit too small in the neck to finish, so I made a new pattern and started work on black and white satin bags, they still aren't finished. I did successfully make dice bags with my new patterns with a third set of fabrics, but the black and white sets still aren't finished! Someday...

 This pillow case is almost finished, I never hemmed the open end, but my daughter loved it so much I haven't really gotten it away from her TO finish!

And one of my more notorious unfinished projects... sword plaques! The one with the shiny black sword and star came finished, which is what inspired me to make holders for our other replica weapons. The plain pine plaque is stained now, and I have plaques for the short sword and dagger also, with sketches and plans for what to do with them, and the idea of a shelf to hang the katana from. But, alas, unfinished. The swords are all in a well-padded box in a storage closet and the plaques and wood stain (what didn't get mistakenly tossed in the move) are in a storage bin in another closet. Just waiting, waiting to be finished. More wall space would help too, I'm already running out of it at our condo right now! When we buy a house, maybe I'll have them done for the new house =)

These are just the tip of the iceberg, but I have gotten better about finishing NEW projects since my resolution. It helps if the item is for a friend, or one of my daughter's dresses. Then I HAVE to get it done!

Do you have a problem with unfinished projects? Are there any projects you really want to finish sitting forgotten in a box, on a shelf, in a closet? Maybe you should try to find some time to finish them, and tell me about it in the comments! I think the bridge should be the first one I finish, then maybe I can take photos and share some of my husband's war gaming terrain.

Thanks for joining me again on this blogging journey! Come back tomorrow for something that starts with V! Only five days left!

A Quiver of Queens

Welcome to the regularly scheduled post for today, for the letter Q! Today I would like to feature a Quiver of Queens, some of my favorites from history and fiction.

Queen Elizabeth I of England has always been one of my favorite queens, considering we share a name and all. She rose from the adversity of her birth - her mother was decapitated when she was a toddler and her sister later imprisoned her - to be one of the most loved monarchs of England. There's even an era named after her, the Elizabethan Era, also sometimes known as the Golden Age. Under her rule, English drama flourished, especially William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. I've watched movies and read books based on her life, and they're all great. Especially Cate Blanchette's portrayal of her. And Phillippa Gregory's British historical romance novels are great - there's one or two featuring Elizabeth I, others about her father, mother, other Tudors and even back before her family with the War of the Roses players. Fun fact - she's the featured ruler of the British Empire in the video game Civilization 5.

But she's not the only great queen around. There are plenty of other historical queens who did great deeds and ruled well, but Elizabeth I is still my favorite. For fictional queens though, I have some other favorites...

Queen Guinevere of Arthurian legend is a conflicted character - does she really love Arthur? In some stories, she does, in others, it's just a marriage of convenience. I want her to love him, Arthur deserves a true love after all he goes through. Child of the Northern Spring by Persia Wooley is a good story about young Guinevere, I never read the following novels - now that I've discovered their existence online I want to! Another favorite Arthurian tale focusing on this queen is Queen of Camelot by Nancie McKenzie. I'm a little into Arthurian legend, so I have a few books about it. I'm always disappointed when Guinevere turns to Lancelot, because I want Arthur to be happy!

Another queen with heartache is Queen Amlaruil Moonflower of Evermeet, a nation in the role playing game setting of Forgotten Realms. She wasn't meant to be queen, but rose to the position, and then through an cruel mistake loses her king but has to keep ruling without him, holding the nation together. She is featured in Evermeet: Island of Elves by Elaine Cunningham, a very interesting history of elves in Forgotten Realms.

The queens in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series provide many different styles of ruling - or yearning to rule. Queen Cersei is a queen you love to hate, Stannis' queen is not really worth thought, while Daenerys' journey to claim her father's throne makes you love her but sometimes wonder at her choices on the how to get there.

Queen Gogo in the movie 300 is worth mentioning for her amazing speech before the council - she's a strong inspiration for characters I play that focus on diplomacy. Aurora's mother in Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel's mother in Tangled both show love toward their long-lost daughters without speaking, just lovely. And of course, the Scarlet Empress of Exalted is a queen, well more than a queen, and amazing in her role.

Queen Cleopatra of Egypt is always an interesting topic, with the Ptolemaic custom of brother-sister marriages and her affair with Marc Antony. Queen Catherine the Great of Russia, more commonly called Empress, revitalized her country during her long rule, while Queen Marie Antoinette of France led a dangerous life of court intrigue - never really in power until her husband's decline, but often in the public eye until her public execution.

That's an exhausting list of queens to read and write about! Do you have a favorite above, or another queen you admire or love to read about? Share in the comments!

Thank you for joining me through this crazy blogging journey from A to Z! Come back tomorrow for something that starts with R!

Incarnations of Immortality - Book Series

Welcome again to my A to Z Blogging Challenge! Today's post starts with I for Incarnations of Immortality, a book series by best-selling author Piers Anthony.

There are eight books in this series, but the eighth book is hard to find and I saw bad reviews of it, so I have not read it yet. The first five books are the core series, focusing on basic Incarnations, while the next two, For Love of Evil, and And Eternity, feature the Incarnations of Good and Evil. The series is set in a fantasy and technology Earth, not far in the future. In this near-Earth, there has always been magic, and technology advanced similar to ours, but magic never lost power.

The books are about mortal people who BECOME the office of a certain fact of life - Death, Fate, Time, Nature, and War, as well as Good, Evil, and Night (in the final book I have not read). These mortals are no longer mortal, but Immortal, and have to deal with the duties of their office, be that taking souls, weaving the threads of life, commanding wars around the world or helping the earth heal after a great calamity.

The first book is called On A Pale Horse, and concerns the Incarnation of Death, the Grim Reaper of common tales. This was published in 1983, and is the best book of the series. It could be a stand-alone book, it really focuses on what it is to BE Death. The main character has the office thrust on him early in the book, and tries to refuse doing the job until he realizes the dangers of there being no death in the world.

The second book is Bearing an Hourglass, and features the Incarnation of Time, Chronos. This book is different, as Chronos lives backward from the time he takes the office. I was confused with the skipping timelines in this book and never really got through it. Some day I might try going back to it. My husband did finish the book, and says, "It was okay. Not great, but okay."

The third book is about Fate, titled With A Tangled Skein. There are actually three Incarnations of Fate: Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, all living in the same body. I liked this book because the main character was female, and she goes through many trials throughout the book, and really deals with being Fate.

The fourth book, Wielding A Red Sword, is about the Incarnation of War. This was another character who tried to buck his responsibilities, trying to follow his own heart instead of fulfilling the duties of his office.

Being A Green Mother is the fifth book, about Mother Nature, the Incarnation of Nature. This was actually the first book I read, because I found it in a used book store and liked the cover (the pretty hair and face on the girl and the wooded background, not the exposed leg and low cut collar). On its own, this is a good book, but as the character doesn't actually BECOME the Incarnation until near the end of the book, it doesn't really jive with the original premise in On A Pale Horse.

The final two books I have read are For Love Of Evil and And Eternity. The book about the Incarnation of Evil is interesting, as it tells the story of how he became Satan, the history of the office through the ages. The book about the Incarnation of Good was less thrilling - concerning more the lack of action of the Incarnation of Good, and the journey to remove him from office and replace him with someone new.

There is one family in the series who plays part in all of the books, interwoven with the main characters of each book. I tried drawing out the family line, then became more interested in other books. I have not searched in a while, but a few years ago there were a few websites devoted to the series.

Overall, I enjoyed the series a lot more in high school, than later in my twenties when I really went back and thought about the books. I would recommend On A Pale Horse to anyone, the rest of the series if you really want to continue with the other Incarnations.

Thanks for reading this entry for the A to Z Blogging Challenge, join me again tomorrow for something starting with J!