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Monday, May 2, 2022

A to Z Challenge Reflections: Gemstone Folklore

#AtoZChallenge 2022 WINNER badge

I have completed my 10th A to Z Challenge!

My theme this year was Gemstone Folklore. You can now find a list of all my posts on this page. It was a theme years in the making, and probably the one that has required the most research ever. I greatly enjoyed it, and it seemed to resonate with people too!

Over the course of April, the blog had more than 10k hits and almost 300 comments (fun fact: diamonds got the most comments, go figure). Hits and comments both tapered off a little towards the end of the month - likely because every participant was running out of steam, and also because I got covid a week ago (owww), and did not have the energy to do as much visiting as I wanted to.

I have a lot to catch up on, in terms of visiting - there were a lot of awesome blogs and themes this year!

Here is a list of some of my favorites, in no particular order:

Fanni Sütő's Ink, Maps & Macaroons - she is a writer friend of mine who participated for the first time this year, and I had great fun reading her personal and honest posts about life intermingled with fiction

From Cave Walls - a fellow mineral & gemstone theme which I loved reading

Brizzy Mays Books and Bruschetta - a theme of Trailblazing Australian Women, from which I learned a whole lot, and put a bunch of books on my TBR about women's history

Sarah Zama's The Old Shelter - an A to Z veteran, Sarah once again brought a really cool historical theme to the challenge, this time about the birth of the New Woman in the 1920s

Anne E.G. Nydam's Black and White - an amazing and artistic theme about designing mythical creatures, and the many features they can have. You can tell it's well researched because she showed me a bunch of new creatures I didn't know about!

Story Crossroads - a fellow veteran with a folktale theme, about dualities in folktales :)

Literacious - the theme was Reaching Reluctant Readers, with a whole lot of cool advice on how to inspire childen to read

Deborah Weber - Pointed Ponderings, a series of posts based on rare and fascinating words. Deborah's A to Z posts always inspire me

Timothy S. Brannan's The Other Side - an A to Z of conspiracy theories, which was great fun to read, and also sometimes mind-numbing

Shout out to the A to Z Challenge team! I love working with you guys :)

18 comments:

  1. I'm glad you came out the other side of covid! And congrats on ten A to Zs completed.

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  2. Wow! Ten years of A-Z? That's quite an accomplishment :-)

    Ronel visiting for A-Z Challenge Reflections 2022

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  3. Gems and folktales - two of my favorite things. I felt like I hit the jackpot with your posts this year, and I can well see how much research and energy you put into this series. Well-done!

    Thanks for the kind shout-out. Thanks, too, for your work on the A-to-Z team.

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  4. What an accomplishment to have completed the A to Z challenge 10 times! Hope you are feeling much better now!

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  5. Great post! Sorry to hear you got Covid. Hope you'll be okay. Thanks for being a cohost at A to Z.
    ~ The Operation Awesome Team

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  6. I hope you've recovered fully. Thanks for the shout-out - I'm so pleased I was able to introduce you to some new creatures. Your blog is always one of my favorites!

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  7. Congratulations on your 10th year. That's awesome. I read a few of your gem posts. That is an interesting fact about the diamonds. I fond of rubies and opals... I wonder if you touched on I will have to have a peek see. Hope you are feeliing better.
    Cheers,
    Barbie

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  8. Congratulations on your 10 years of AtoZ wins and feel better soon!

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  9. Another one is in the books! Congratulations on #10!

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  10. Congratulations on ten years of A to Z challenges. I hope you recover quickly from the virus.
    Thank you for helping to administer the challenge. I look forward to catching up with lots of blogs during the road trip.
    Visiting from A to Z.

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  11. Congrats on 10 years of AtoZ posting, that´s an amazing accomplishment! I hope you´re feeling much better right away, take things easy. Now that the challenge ended, we can catch up visiting. Thanks for the blog recommendations, I´ll try to visit them, too! :D

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  12. Congratulations! 10th AtoZ is an accomplishment and kudos to you. I hope you are fully recovered soon. Yours is one of the blogs that I had hoped to read more and it's interesting that we overlap a little in other blogs we enjoyed. (I never did get a list of those together - sigh.)

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  13. Wow! 10 challenges completed! I just completed my first and realized how much work it is. Of course, fun too! Doing 10 of them? Truly an achievement! Congratulations!

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  14. Congratulations on completing the challenge! And on the 10 years -- that's quite an accomplishment! I enjoyed your theme and appreciated all that I learned about gemstones and their related stories.

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  15. Congrats! 10 years is amazing! I've been here and now back again. It was fun to return to the challenge, and I had a great year too.

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  16. Congratulations! 10 years. Wow!

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  17. Congrats on finishing! Like you, I got busy in the latter half and didn't visit as many as I should have. Trying to make up for it now!

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