Happy Needlepoint Christmas Eve

Since I needlepoint Christmas ornaments all year long I regularly get a comment from some bystander saying something like, “Wow, you are really getting a head start on Christmas”. This especially true when I am stitching a red and green Santa in May or a snowman in July, but what these well meaning admirers don’t understand is that the Christmas deadline is tomorrow, August 25th. By May or July I am feeling the deadline to complete my canvases so I can have a finished ornament back from the fabricator in time to enjoy it this Christmas season.
At the Christmas deadline party I attended the first full year of stitching Elizabeth, one of the very prolific stitching advisors asked me how many ornaments I had made that year. I proudly said, “34.” In reality it was not a ground breaking number. She challenged me to a contest for the next year that started that very day. I worked my finger to the bone, loving a challenge and never ever wanting to lose a contest.  
I worked and worked and on that years Needlepoint Christmas Day I proudly turned in the last of my 45 canvases, thinking I certainly had won. But no… Although the I had beaten Elizabeth, only because she worked on many non-ornament larger canvases, but Kate, another stitching advisor had pulled ahead and came in with 50 ornaments. Shoot, a dark horse I had not expected.
Elizabeth sat this year out to spend time finishing lots of other works in Progress and Kate was training for her Kilimanjaro hike so I was thinking I had a good chance to win this year. My pace was better than last year so I took the luxury to complete some larger canvases thinking I was still going to having the winning number.   
Come sometime in July, when I had finished about 58 ornaments I asked my friend Christy what number she was on. Sixty-seven was her total with more than a month to go. My heart sank. Another year I would not win, but what was I really losing? There is no money on this race, no trophy, no cake or a sash or even a tiara.  
Tomorrow I will go to Chapel Hill Needlepoint, with my friend Christy. I have ornament number 67 finished and ready to turn in. I may get 68 done by then, but there is no guarantee. I have not asked Christy what her number is, but certainly I know it will we’ll beat mine. In advance I would like to congratulate her on a really good year.
I look at it this way, I won by making 67 or 68 beautiful works of art that I will cherish forever. I am not sure my child will love them as much as I do when I’m gone, but for a I hope many more Christmases I will love taking them out and putting up to celebrate the season. I am officially going to stop competing in the number or ornaments contest and spend the next year concentrating on learning new stitches and taking on my difficult projects. I may never have won the challenge, but I have not been disappointed in the competition.
So Merry Needlepoint Christmas Day. I had to write about it early because tomorrow also happens to be the first day of junior year for Carter. That is a much more important day in my life than the end of the needlepoint year so I have to reserve my blog for that tomorrow. I need to have a little perspective when it comes to needlepoint.