Checking It Twice

No, this isn't a post about Santa. It is about checking for basic errors, like spelling, addition and counting, before doing something.

You would think after over 40 years of silly spelling mistakes and loosing marks on math tests for addition errors at the end of a properly done calculus questions, I would know to check things. But I don't seem to ever remember that lesson.

Today's case in point was a web site I'm taking over. I tried to do some editing last week and couldn't get it to work. I phoned for technical help today and discovered I was doing things correctly, so then I checked the file name, and lo and behold, a spelling error. Once corrected, everything worked. If I had just checked the spelling last week, I could have save myself days of worry, guilt and feelings of inadequacy.

There is a relation to needlework in all of this. I made over a dozen Christmas ornaments (see above) this year for various family members from several different patterns. Most were quite simple and straight forward. I did a quilt pattern from The Prairie Schooler and it was easy to see when I was making a counting error and I could correct things easily. But, when I was working on the adorable Hope dragon(the blue dragon ornament) - a free cross-stitch pattern from Jennifer Aikman-Smith on her Dragon Dreams web site- I discovered that I was a whole row out in both directions and I was totally unwilling to frog all the work I had done, so I fudged it, and it looks okay - although the designer may disagree.

I am determined to try to remember to take the time to check things over - we'll see if I can actually do that. Usually I am so excited or rushed that I forget, but I can always hope. (I did do a spell check before publishing this!)