I can always use a thank you card, so I decided to letter "thank you". I didn't spend much time sketching and went right to work vectorizing. Loved the tips about keeping the handles at 45° and 90°. It also helped to get another opinion on where to put the anchor points. I've been working in Illustrator for 20+ years and I swear I learn something new every time I use it! 

I'm not super happy with the "a" and "o" but I liked the idea of using several different styles of letters to try a bunch of different techniques. If I was making this "for real" I would probably either do the soft corner slab serif style (like the "u") or the organic modern calligraphy style. 

Thanks for the quick tutorial, Illana!