What do you do when your modem dies...

We have been having increasing problems getting on-line, despite Virgin being adamant it was our router that was causing the problem. We did as they asked and uploaded the patch, even though ours wasn't model causing them problem. We continued be thrown off every five minutes or sooner. Finally Sy managed to get through to someone at Virgin who knew what the problem was (a woman!!!). Our modem had died of old age, say ahhh. It's been up and running constantly for the last six years but its finally given up the ghost. We were told it would be 3-4 days before we received a replacement what was I going to do without the internet? Well I actually did some sewing. These photos are out of order again but the purple and cream (yes its cream not lilac) blocks are the base on which my 100 stitches are sewn. I thought I'd keep the colours to a narrow pallet so all the threads and beads are in the purple, lilac,pink range with green as the one alternative colour.
So with several days internet free ahead of me I decided I'd buckle down and get the baby floormats finished, well on the way at least. The photos aren't too good Oliver's train mat has a yellow and blue backing it looks rather grey here. I created some applique trains using a child's colouring book as the pattern. I still have to stitch round these so that they will stand out. I did wonder whether to do the applique before putting the back on then decided I wanted the outline to show on the back. Just got to sew down the binding and as I said stitch round the trains.
Grace's floormat is in two shades of green with a black/beige border insert and it has sheep on it, well it will when I've finished them. This time I've put the applique on before the backing but I wish I'd put them on before I sewed the blocks together. The sheep are fleece and the faces cream cotton, lets the border print and I have to embroider some eyes on them. It's based on one of Lynne Edwards patterns from her Stack Buster book.

In addition I've been trying to catch up with my 100 Stitches challenge. I've done ten days and still have another ten to do before I'm up to date.

I also managed to get my July TIF challenge piece done. Not done the August one yet but have an idea of what I'll be doing. The challenge was to do something representing "The Halfway Mark". On the day the challenge was announced I read a BBC News article stating that the Human Genome Project had reached its halfway mark. How appropriate I though. For those of you not familiar with the HGP, several institutions have got together and shared out the 24 known human genomes. They are trying to fill in the gaps and correct any errors in them and at the beginning of July they reached the halfway mark. Twelve down, 12 to go.

TAST has also taken a bit of a back seat and this is my cross stitch sample I've used different weight threads and different size stitches. I'm not entirely happy with it and feel I could have done a better job if I'd given more thought to what I was doing. It sort of grew. I still have two more to catch up on.


More of my 100 stitches.

Well I got a special birtday present today (yes today is my birthday, its also Keith's,) Issue 5 of Fibre&Stitch came out. I can't print it out yet as my ink has run out and as my spares have disappeared I am assuming that Sy has taken them for his printer. Birthdays, it gets a bit expensive for the boys when their parents birthdays fall on the same day so we told them not to bother much. But naturally they did buy us something. I got a lovely little nail kit one of those made by the Swiss Army Knife company and I'm booked in to have my nails done professionally. I'm really looking forward to that. Keith got a box of real ale and two 3D jigsaws that should keep him out of my hair for a while. Keith and I celebrated our birthday early, while on holiday as we knew he would be on nightshift this week I expect we'll go out for a meal at the weekend though and as he's on holiday again next week we'll sneak in something special.

One other thing I've done for my birthday is have coffee with a friend I've not seen for a long time. It was lovely meeting up with Joan again, life just gets in the way sometime but we've arranged lunch with our menfolk on Monday so that's something to look forward to.

It seems such a long time since I blogged that I've forgotten a lot of what I've been doing over the last few days (apart from sewing). We took my mum to Redcar for fish and chips and she spent an hour in the arcades playing the slot machines. We hate slot machines but mum is an addict but she thoroughly enjoyed herself and came out only slightly the looser.

I can hear Keith moving around I guess its time to make a cuppa.