My calligraphy [1] has gotten to the point where I'm now doing actual illuminated (illustrated) pieces (although other people do the illumination—I just add the lettering). The main problem I have now is that the writing is so slow that it's very easy to make a mistake.
In fact, I made two mistakes on the piece I just finished.
Mistake number one: I was supposed to write “whose continued and exemplary service as a chirurgeon has brought comfort to so many.” But in going so slow, I wasn't paying attention to what I was actually lettering, and wrote instead “whose continued and exemplary service to so m” before realizing my mistake.
Oops.
Not having a small knife [2] to scrape the mistake away (nor even the more modern Liquid Paper™ [3]) I decided to carry on and rewrite that particular sentence to read “whose continued and exemplary service to so many as a chirurgeon has brought comfort.”
Okay, so not the best wording, but when it's hard (or impossible) to fix mistakes, you roll with it.
Mistake number two: the word was supposed to be “Companion” but I had just finished writing “Ch” when I realized it wasn't supposed to be “Champion.”
Oops.
It's “Champion” now. Hope that's okay.
Who would have thought that going so slow would be so error prone?
[2] http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/tools/errors.htm
[3] http://inventors.about.com/od/lstartinventions/a/liquid_paper.htm