When I was in primary school (I guess you USA girls would call it elementary school), we were made to do needlework, which mainly involved making funny little toy hamsters because they didn't take more than a whole term to make. (Although I do actually remember making a teddy bear that I was so proud of at the time!) I loved looking at the end result of the thing I had made, but getting to that point was somewhat painstaking. I always had problems threading the needle, and usually had to get a friend or the teacher to do it for me. And then there was the fact that my stitching was unbelievably messy, since I usually tried to rush through it to get to that end product of the finished article, which, ironically, more often than not was followed by the unpicking of all my stitches by the teacher because it was deemed "unacceptable".
Move on a good 12 years at least, and I'm loving the way that sewing looks on layouts, particularly the stitched lettering of the amazing Amy Tan. You may remember a layout in the last post where I tried to recreate this look. Well, it was rather messy looking, I have to say. Not too bad for a first attempt though, I suppose. Anyway, when we were given stitched lettering as our next prompt over at The Creative Type, I was pleased to be able to give it another go. Here is what I came up with:
Although I still haven't entirely perfected the stitching, it's a lot better than my last attempt, and in fact I think this is actually one of my favourite ever layouts of mine. I'm totally addicted to stitched letters after this. I love the actual sewing process of it, and I love the fact that by doing it, it means I don't have to use up so many of my precious letter stickers!! It's seriously so much fun. Come and play along with us at http://useyourtype.blogspot.com.
Just a quick note about the thoughts behind this layout. Back in June last year, I was accepted by British Airways for one of their training courses to be an air hostess. A few weeks later they told me that nfortunately they were unable to offer me a start date for a course as they had had to freeze all training and further recruitment due to the recession, and didn't know when they might be able to start things up again. When I found what I thought was my dream first job bacin in August, working for a magazine up in London, I thought that if British Airways were to contact me then, I would have to turn them down, since I desperately wanted to be a journalist. A couple of weeks ago, I lost that job. When I was told, I had very mixed messages about it. On the one hand I was slightly relieved, since things had become rather strained at work in the past few months due to the long commute and a new member of staff who seemed to take delight in making people's lives difficult. But on the other hand I was extremely scared, particularly from a financial point of view. I didn't know what I was going to do next, as it seems to be extremely difficult to find a job in this current economic climate. And from what a fellow journalist told me, getting another job in journalism was going to be pretty much impossible.
Two days after losing my job, British Airways phoned me to offer me a start date for a training course. Talk about meant to be. I didn't even know they'd resumed their training again, particularly since I got an email from them only about 6 weeks ago to say that all training was still frozen indefinitely, but that they would keep my details on file until December 2009, by which point if I hadn't been offered a course date, I would have to go through the whole application process if I still wanted to work for them. I can't tell you how gobsmacked I was. I was in utter disbelief that things could have worked out so well after getting the bad news about my job just 2 days before.
But then I realised that it had been in the plan the whole time. That's when the Jeremiah verse came to mind.
"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jeremiah 29:11)
God knew I was going to lose my job that day. He knew I would be worried about money and stuff. And for some reason that I am yet to discover, He wanted me to be an air hostess. Whether it's to satisfy my desire to travel, or for some deeper purpose, I don't know. And the journalism? Well, when I lost my job, I contacted someone I knew who was the deputy editor of the travel section at one of the national newspapers to see what advice he could give me since travel journalism is the direction I had decided I wanted to go in. He told me that I couldn't have chosen a worse time to get into travel journalism as it was the one section that was having to make the most budget cuts. He actually advised me to do a non-journalistic job for a while, and said that the best journalists are those who have done a variety of things before. So, if you look at my situation, I can't really think of a better non-journalistic job that might help a career in travel journalism in the future. There are a few publications for aircrew, as well as BA's own magazine, that I could perhaps contribute to so as to keep my hand in the writing world.
So, all in all, things couldn't have worked out better. And I am so so so excited when I think about starting my training and starting my long haul flights. I'm going to see the world!! Whoooo hoooooooo!
I am a Typist. 
