Slow and steady wins the race

One of the most vivid memories I have from my early childhood has eggs in them – being in an egg-and-spoon race on a sports day in primary school. Yep, the race where you balance an egg on a spoon and race to the finishing line without dropping. If you try to run at top speed your egg will soon fly out of the spoon, so the trick is to go slow and steady.

 

I actually do not remember how the race turned out (though I’m pretty sure I didn’t win), but I can recall how proud and satisfied I felt when I finally reached the finishing line and the egg was still sitting on my spoon. I was probably slow, but kept my feet moving steadily towards the finishing line while not forgetting to keep the egg safe by holding the spoon stable.

 

I kept coming back to this memory this weekend, maybe because I was working on my tatting project for Easter, an egg decoration. Or, maybe because it was a slow project which really got me to think how I can make steady progress with it.

 

At first, I was running at top speed, being able to find fairly fast a beautiful pattern that I want to tat and having a good image of how the final product would look like. I had just the colours I wanted to use and was tatting along quite smoothly.

 

Until I realized I had overlooked a very important aspect, that is… It slipped my mind to check the size of the threads! So now, I had a pattern that just would not fit onto an egg as is. What should I do?

Maybe throw it out and start from scratch with another pattern that will fit onto an egg?

Or maybe forget about decorating an egg and make something else out of whatever I have tatted up until here?

 

And that is when the egg-and-spoon race came back once again – I don’t want to drop out midway or go off the track, I want to stand at the original finishing line with the egg in my hand all proud and satisfied! So I decided to carry on no matter how slow it may go and concentrate on making a steady move towards completing it.

 

Well, it was indeed slow, but I was steady, and I am proud and satisfied once again (where the egg is concerned, at the very least). What do you think, have I proven that there are times you can come out a winner going slow and steady?

 

If this reminds you of cherry blossoms in blue sky, I’ve succeeded!

And if you thought the little mat underneath the egg looks familiar, how very observant of you… now you know how it all came to fall in place!

 

Happy Easter Sunday to everyone who is celebrating!!