Hey! I remember these!

This morning I was cleaning up an extra room in my parents house, and ran across these two pieces in a drawer!  My very, very first attempt at counted cross stitch, stitched when I was in college....ummm, let's see, 38 years ago!!!
  
What is even more amazing to me is that at the time, there was really very little counted cross stitch available, no patterns, no beautiful even weave or Aida fabric...nada...nothing.  I had found this yellow "towel" at a dime store sort of place, and since I could actually see the weave, decided to take it home.  I found a needlepoint design in a catalog and painstakingly transferred it square by square onto graph paper, then chose some embroidery floss and started stitching what I had so tediously counted and graphed.  It was a lot of work for a couple of little designs, but from that point on I was hooked on counted cross stitch. I then found some  hardanger fabric at a needlepoint store and began doing cross stitch on the hardanger fabric. It was nearly three years later before I discovered Aida fabric and counted cross stitch patterns...that was an exciting day, let me tell you!