Author’s note: I wrote the majority of this post in March. Suffice it to say things have progressed since then, but I didn’t want to scrap everything I had already written. In the time since I wrote this, I finished painting my living room and dining room, painted the craft room, assembled IKEA furniture solo, built bookshelves, took possession of my grandmother’s sewing machine (and started working on it), and much more. It’s looking like home and I finally have time to think about needlework again.

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I actually moved almost six months ago. I’ve had every intention to post since then (and before then), but sometimes life gets in the way. This time, a lot of life got very in the way.

The Part Where I Ramble

I’ve had health issues for a long time, and the second half of 2023 and the first half of 2024 were the sickest I’ve ever been. With very little mental and physical energy leftover after working and attempting to take care of myself, I struggled to write anything at all. I did the Aintab post from my bed, accidentally erased most of it while adding the pictures¹, and had to start nearly over. I finally got a firm medical diagnosis a few weeks after that incident and learned that I would need to dedicate quite a bit of time to more appointments, testing, and treatment. Things have been fortunately moving in the right direction since then, but the reality of being disabled is that “body maintenance” is going to be a permanent feature of my life that frequently interferes with things I actually want to be doing.

I had already planned to move by the end of the year, well before I attained my physical therapy frequent flier status. Knowing that I realistically wouldn’t be able to stay committed to a serious project and find a new place to live while also dealing with the medical stuff, I put most of my craft plans on hiatus. I started seriously looking for places in August and spent a whirlwind weekend touring condos with my mom in between physical therapy, the state fair² , and visiting all four (4) restaurants in my city where we can both safely eat.

Serendipitously, I ended up in the first condo I toured. This was not part of the plan, as the market in my area (and probably most areas) is intense and I fully expected my housing search to take months. I was then thrust into all of the things that go along with moving into a condo and some things that don’t, like discovering that the previous occupants misrepresented several details on legal documents. Despite this, I eventually did get the keys.

Moving was extremely challenging and physically taxing. I was dealing with a back issue that had been exacerbated by an overly aggressive physical therapy program and under strict orders from my doctor to not lift more than 20 pounds, which made everything more difficult. I had to hire movers for my furniture and the bigger boxes, but managed to get my sentimental items³ myself. My parents came to help with the aftermath but my body had given up by that point so they were not helping so much as going through my to-do list for me to get my condo into a minimally livable state. We did go to the hardware store eight⁴ times that weekend.

Another reality of being disabled is that many things that non-disabled people can do quickly and easily are not quick or easy for me. It took multiple months to fully unpack, even though I moved from a rented bedroom and really didn’t have very much stuff. I had planned to take off work the week of Thanksgiving to paint, but ended up needing the week off just to rest. Through all of this time, I continued to have appointments at least twice a week and truly didn’t have any spare energy to do home projects.

This is all to say that I was running on fumes (for multiple reasons) for a significant portion of 2024. I did still have 3 major condo accomplishments (outside of moving) which were:

• Finding legendary living room furniture second-hand
• Buying a rug that I am in love with
• Getting amazing bedroom furniture from a coworker who didn’t want it anymore⁵

The Part About Interior Design

It is probably not surprising that I have strong opinions about interior design. As soon as I found out I got the condo, I started building Sims mockups and even bought some extra packs just to get more furniture options⁶. This is the first time I have the opportunity to fully design my own space, and I want it to be beautiful and intentional. There’s no room for millennial gray in my vision. The mockup isn’t to scale (and is obviously limited to the options that are built into the game), but it’s a good representation of the style I’m aiming for. I did cheat and change the living room to match the furniture I actually bought.

Here are some pictures from before I fully moved in, including my aforementioned second-hand living room furniture. The carpet is a long story and the stains ultimately didn’t come out even after professional cleaning. I’m living with it for the foreseeable future because it isn’t actually unsanitary, just unpleasant to look at.

I collect postcards of paintings as souvenirs when I visit art museums and I have quite a few at this point. My favorites (and the ones I had on my wall before I moved) are a series of Van Goghs that I decided early on to make my main source of design inspiration.

Almond Blossoms is my all-time favorite painting, but the yellows in Still Life: Vase with Irises Against a Yellow Background and Sunflowers are a better match for the color of my floor⁷. For this reason, I decided to go for primary colors in the living room and dining room, with yellow walls, a predominantly blue rug (and likely curtains too in the future), and red accents. I first picked a rug based on this criteria and checked how well the paint colors I liked would coordinate. The colors below are heavily down-selected from the rather large (and growing) library of paint chips I now have.

I was originally drawn to the darkest yellow, but decided it would be too dark. After getting samples of the mid-tone and lightest yellow, I ultimately selected the mid-tone, Sherwin-Williams Midday, and I am truly in love with how it is turning out.

I’m not done painting yet; I need to finish the entryway, one of the living room walls, and the dining room. Unfortunately, another reality of being disabled is that my body often loudly protests when I do something I shouldn’t (in this case, spending an entire weekend standing on a ladder). I’m halfway through week two of resting and I’m able to lift my arms again, so I’m hoping I can get back to painting this weekend. My current lack of curtains is pretty conspicuous, which was its own ordeal that resulted in me finding an alternative solution to the light and privacy issue. I’m no longer in occupational therapy, but I think my old OT would be proud of this level of problem solving.

The dining room is relatively low on my priority list beyond painting. My long-term plan is to get a hutch and eventually replace the blinds. I found my excellent table and chairs at a local antique store and I love the carved detail on the chairs. My great-grandmother⁸ made the table runner and the pine cones are courtesy of my condo complex trees. The plant grew from a cutting of a cutting of my great-grandmother’s⁹ dieffenbachia, and I’m pleased to say that it has been thriving in the nearly three years that I’ve had it.

My bedroom feels mostly done. I still need to paint, but I cannot safely (or unsafely for that matter) move any of the furniture by myself, which means it has to wait until I have help. The furniture is all from my coworker, who apparently hated it the entire time he owned it and couldn’t wait to get rid of it when he moved. It’s perfect for me and exactly my style. This is also more storage than I’ve had in a long time, and it’s nice to have empty drawers.

My bedroom is another amalgamation of the past even before considering the furniture. The runner on the dresser is another piece I inherited from my grandmother, this time most likely made by her mother. The quilt is a combination of my own work (hand-pieced at eight, in the center) and my aunt’s, who finished the piecing where my attention ran out. The bear on the dresser is from the Texas Renaissance Festival, as is one of the ring dishes. The other ring dish is from a local business. Finally, I have two of my own cross stitch pieces on the wall.

I picked out my wall color already – Sherwin-Williams Romance – and I think it will match beautifully with Fox Forest below and Pomegranate Quaker.

Not pictured is my craft room, because it is currently a mess¹⁰ and also going to change significantly in the next few months. My grandmother was a tailor, and one of the more notable things I inherited from her was one of her industrial sewing machines, a Singer Model 31-15. Until now, I have had no place to put it, and it has lived in my dad’s workshop for years. I’m planning to restore it¹¹ after my parents transfer custody to me. If I’m successful, I think it will become my primary machine¹².

The craft room is going to be a huge project on its own, and I have big plans. I have another coworker¹³ who wants to start building custom furniture, and I have enlisted him to build me some bookshelves. I’m still toying with the best way to take advantage of the space and the natural light to make it as functional as possible.

The Part You Come Here For

I would be lying if I said my needlework to-do list has not exponentially expanded since I moved. One of the things I am most excited about is that I now have the space to tackle larger projects. I have wanted to embroider a tablecloth for a long time, and have slowing been picking up knowledge (sources for quality counted yardage, finishing techniques, learning multiple types of cutwork) to be able to do that. It didn’t make sense to start before I had my own table in my own dining room, and I can’t wait to start planning in earnest. I’ve been looking through my Armenian embroidery books for inspiration and I think I have landed on something that will be beautiful. Before I tackle the tablecloth, I will likely make a runner (or runners) to test out fabrics.

There are several projects I want to finish (or at least make significant progress on) before I move on to home decorating. It can be hard for me to finish some projects because I enjoy being able to pick them up and put them down without any consideration to planning; I enjoy planning projects¹⁴, but for the planning is an entirely separate hobby from the execution. Still though, my queue is a little too long and several of my WIPs would look excellent on one of my many blank walls.

Selections from my WIP list, roughly in priority order:

• Autumn Quakers
• Geese and Sunflowers
• Iris’ Paintbox
• 17th century needlelace

Near-future new projects:

• Knit dishcloths – I use them as coasters and not for washing dishes
• A new blanket for my couch- technically I started this one but it’s on hold
• Cross stitch fridge magnets
• Autumn Flowers from OwlForest Embroidery
• An Aintab table runner

Long-term (mostly hypothetical at this point) projects:

• Drapes
• Lace drapes¹⁵
• An Aintab tablecloth
• A needlelace tablecloth for an end table that I currently don’t have
• A Svaz runner or tablecloth

That’s all for now. I’m sure I will have a lot to share in the coming months.

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1. You might think I learned my lesson from that and now draft posts somewhere other than the WordPress editor, but you would be wrong. ↩︎
2. The 2024 fair recap is more belated than usual. ↩︎
3. Translation: all of my craft supplies ↩︎
4. I wish I was exaggerating. Luckily I am less than 10 minutes from both Home Depot and Lowe’s. ↩︎
5. In this house we support the circular economy. ↩︎
6. I have priorities. ↩︎
7. I feel physical pain when I see rooms with warm hardwood and gray walls. ↩︎
8. Haiganoush, the namesake of my blog, who I never met. ↩︎
9. A different great-grandmother, who I did meet and knew quite well. ↩︎
10. And a holding area for my tools and painting supplies when I don’t want to put them away. ↩︎
11. Possibly wishful thinking, but the actual machine is in great condition. The table needs to be refinished and it might need a new motor. I’ve been casually researching and it seems like replacement parts are pretty available if I end up needing them. ↩︎
12. I say this as if I sew a lot, but frustrations with my current (domestic) machine are a large part of why I don’t. ↩︎
13. We’re all very industrious. ↩︎
14. My to-do list says I enjoy it a little too much. ↩︎
15. Maybe not practical but I love the idea. It could be a way to experiment with faux lace using my (domestic) sewing machine. ↩︎