Something different

I thought I'd google newspaper articles about cross stitch and see what I might find.  Here are a few of my favorites

First, we have an artist who uses magazine covers as a jumping off point for collage art featuring cross stitch and other forms of embroidery: 

http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/14413/1/inge-jacobsen

Next up, a story about a British POW in a Nazi camp using needlepoint to spell out British patriotic statements and a subversive and obscene suggestion of what Hitler might do to himself in the dots and dashes [Morse Code] borders of a cross stitched swastika.  The Germans were so oblivious to the hidden message that they sent the sampler on a tour of POW camps to be proudly exhibited to other prisoners.

http://makezine.com/craft/subversive_finds/

And another artist who embroiders silk screened photos lifted from newspapers

http://www.thebolditalic.com/articles/3228-all-the-news-thats-fit-to-embroider-works-by-lauren-dicioccio

The one thread [pardon the pun] that runs through all of these articles is the amazement that granny crafts can be art or political subversion or, indeed, anything other mundane and rather trite.  Journalists are so very condescending when it comes to needlearts.