SFO FTW!

Best airport ever!  (FTW = "for the win" for those of you not up on the nerd lingo)  I was sitting in the domestic terminal before, because I had a bottle of water and wanted to finish it before going through security again. I wandered around some, then found out that...bam!  No security to get to the international terminal! There's a secret passage by gate 75 that takes you right to the international terminal, close enough to security that you can thumb your nose at those poor suckers, but not actually outside of security!  w00t!  Now I just gotta chill out for 2.5 hours before I get on a plane and sit some more...for another...16 hours.  That's two full working days!  Yikes! 

Good news is, my plane is already here:

On the plane here, I started a new journal, daydreaming about quilts I'm going to make.  The list is as follows (in no particular order):

• Quilts for Kids -  I just got the kit before I left, so I'm itching to get back to this one.  I think I'm going to try free motion quilting for the first time.  Tips would be appreciated. 
• Alishia's string quilt - I still need to name this one, but I haven't figured out the pattern of the strings yet, so that's hard.  
• Mai's graduation quilt - this one is going to be black, white, and red.  I'm thinking of doing a heartstrings quilt for this, but I'm not sure.  I have about 2 dozen fat quarters up for grabs for this one so far, as well as a few fun remnants.  It'll definitely be a work of chaos.  Suggestions for this one are welcome too...keep in mind that Mai is my 17-year-old mentee, who's graduating high school in June.  My mom made me a quilt when I went off to college and it helped me be not so homesick...I figured Mai could use the same. 
• Alishia's donation quilt - This one has to be a HeartStrings donation, because I said so lol.  Should be fairly straightforward...I'll need new reds, but I have PLENTY of blues left over from my mom's quilt. 
• Mai's donation quilt - I haven't decided on a charity for this one, but it seems fitting that it should be something that helps teens...specifically teens in trouble.  Maybe I'll find a shelter around Boston, sort of like here.
• Mom's Paddington quilt - As previously described.  I won that panel, so that rocks.  I'll have to see how big the inside is when I get it, then plan the rest out from there.  
• Arman's I Spy quilt - I'm hoping to find some flexible, toddler-friendly velcro someplace so I can make the pictures movable but still semi-permanent.  I'll keep you posted on how that goes. 
• The t-shirt quilt - I think I'm not even going to plan this out until I have a better feel for the size of the shirt cuts. 
• A crumb quilt - I've been seeing a lot of these in various blogs lately, and I LOVE the idea!  I want to make this one for myself.  I have a trunk that Nick got me for my birthday (an old steamer trunk) that really needs some quilts in it.  Sadly, everything I own is currently used to keep me warm at night, so I don't have anything in there!  
• A memory quilt - this one I came up with when I was thinking about what I'll be doing in Queenstown.  There's a fabric store about 15 minutes walking from my hostel, which I fully intend to patronize.  I was thinking that it would be REALLY cool to get fabrics from there (and make this a tradition for every place I go), then make a quilt of them.  Each block would have a picture from the trip printed on fabric in the center, then the fabric I buy on the trip would surround it in some pattern.  Make a few of those blocks and bam!  You got yerself a memory quilt!  We'll see how that works out.  

Of those 10 projects, 7 I want to have finished by July.  Yikes.  We'll see how that goes.  Nick is apparently going down to Florida the week after I get back, so I'll have all night every night (except Wednesday, which is class night) to sew to my heart's content.  I'm absolutely looking forward to it.  (Which isn't to say I won't miss him, it's just I get to feeling guilty (ha! almost typed "quilty") when he's around and I'm ignoring him for the sewing machine.)  

On that note, I'm gonna hulu it up while I still can (you can't get hulu outside the US) and blow the next 2 hours watching TV and writing postcards (which I won't be able to send until I'm back because they no longer have mail boxes in airports...for security reasons.  Riddle me that.)