I designed this cross stitch with French knots in response to the #StayHome mandate at the start of the Corona Virus pandemic hitting my city around the middle of March, 2020. Using graph paper and Adobe Illustrator, I designed the layout that I later implemented on 14-count Aida cloth. The point of using an age-old craft technique for this poster is due to how much time counted cross stitch takes, something that staying home with nowhere to go makes possible. Its title is a spoof of communication thinker Marshall McCluhan's famous phrase, "The medium is the message" introduced in his Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964. McLuhan proposed that a communication medium itself, not the messages it carries, should be the primary focus of study. I wanted the medium to send the message that sometimes staying home = tedium at this time, but that COVID time could also yield unexpectedly beautiful results and new ways of thinking.
