Hi everyone,
So it’s been 5 weeks now and I’m starting to feel like this is my daily job and life, it’s hard to believe I’ve only been here just over a month and not an entire year I’ve settled in so well. This week was ‘The London Textile Fair’ as well as we have a couple new freelancers start which made for a very busy week.
I’m starting to adjust to London life now although it is significantly tighter on funds than when I’m living at home/uni. The cost of living in London is incredibly expensive for example my travel to and from work each week totals at just under £40, whereas in Coventry for my next internship the cost for travel will be £50 for the entire month (both are using public transport only). One issue I personally find about living in London is feeling lonely, as I’m not from the area I don’t know anyone who lives in London except my flat mate and her friends. Being home sick is definitely a major part of doing an internship in a new city further away from home than you are used to however being so caught up at work it’s not as noticeable now as it was in the first couple of weeks.
As the textile fair was on Wednesday/Thursday this meant all the mounting and overlocking we normally have had to be completed in half the time so they could accompany Amanda herself and Duncan the assistant CEO to the fair. I very much learnt there is a limit to how long you can sit at an overlocker for before it becomes dramatically painful and you feel like you’re going to turn into the Hunchback of Notre Dame. But between 3 of us we did manage to get everything done and ready to be taken to the show. Unfortunately I did not get to go to the show however from talking to the textile interns they told me it is very similar to premier vision which takes place in Paris. However in my personal time I decided to attempt to draw my own geo pattern as according to the sales managers these types of prints sell well at the fairs but this specific print is just for my personal use and blog.
Once all the fabric had been packed up ready to go we searched through the archives for print options for a variety of brands to their specification which was interesting looking at the old prints various designers had produced. The archives are huge and separated into different styles of prints and some designers in an attempt to make designs easier to find. This organisation sounds simple however like most things if one person does something wrong can mess up the whole system. We spent several hours re-organizing some files into their correct designers and filing them away. We also had to re-organise the current work as now we are into November we need to make space for them on the shelves and move the oldest work into the archives which again took us a while to do however fortunately was fairly well organised to didn’t take too long to put away.
In terms of my learning for this week I haven’t learnt anything really, but I have gotten to put the skills I have learnt into practice with less supervision over the interns for the past week. Putting my skills into practice has taught me one key lesson which although is not useful to me for my final year it is for my general life. I have learnt if this were my full time job and I had to do tasks such as these on a daily basis I would be quite happy and content with my life. After a retail job that bored me or put me in pain and stressful times at university as well as prior in school it feels reassuring I have chosen the right path, all the work will be worth it and it will make me happy later in life which is all a person can really hope for.
In my personal life my boyfriend came to visit me again and we visited the Tower of London. This was a great day out and very interesting learning the history of the towers with it’s residents, prisoners, uses and executions. I never knew how enormous Ravens are, as there are several in residence at the tower flying around and enjoying life I got to see them much closer understanding quite how big these birds are which was interesting. During our visit we also got to view the crown jewels past and present which were stunning to see in person. There were many queues to see the jewels being one of the main parts of attraction to the tower but eventually we did get in to see them. Although we did have a fun day out I’m not 100% sure it was worth the entry price but definitely something I can tick off the places I would like to visit.
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