Germany, here we come!

In August 2017 my husband, TheEnabler (his official craft title) received a job offer for a 2.5 yr contract in Germany. After making sure I could join him AND keep my job, he accepted.

Because he was finishing his degree and we wanted to actually spend time with family and friends over the holiday, he would head over in January and I would join him in March.

Because I have my priorities in VERY good order, one of the first packing challenges I tackled in early January was “what craft things would come with me? What could I destash? And what would await my return?”

Ok, so I had done a little prep work in the fall. Using reports from Ravelry and some nifty free visualization software (Qlik), I had determined that I am more likely to use yarn that I bought or made for a reason. And that I’m better at using up some colors than others. Ravelry also makes it easy to see how many yards your projects total to so you can get a quick average yards/yr average.

My best friend, the AwesomeE, came down to help me out in early January. This is part of why she is the AwesomeE – she travelled 6hrs by car to help me get ready to leave the continent. This was actually only trip one of two.

We laid out all the fluffies…

(Not pictured – my giant tubs of fabric and sewing supplies, most of these would stay home)

And she helped me narrow down what I would bring. Projects in progress were pre-approved as it were. Yarn with a planned project was generally higher on the list, unless the project was something which wouldn’t have any use until I was back in the states (like the lace tablecloth I’ll make some day out of the yarn TheEnabler told me I wasn’t allowed to give away).

I also left behind any fiber that was uncarded with higher VM as a higher customer/import risk. I made sure all fiber was washed before putting it in storage though.

I also tried to ensure variety in the yarns and fibers I would bring. Left overs and scraps were left behind, with the exception of a few bit for potential repairs to garments we were bringing.

Once I had it all packed up, along with the tools I wanted and carefully selected fabric, this is what it came too…

Fluffy things squish down really well!

So what tools did I bring? I kept in mind usefulness, cost of shipping and cost of rebuying here. I brought along most of my knitting needles and crochet hooks – total value far exceeds the shipping cost to and from Germany. I also brought my ball winder & swift. The swift is cheap ($20), but also fit into the box I was already shipping without adding significant weight. Sewing machines stayed out. They are both crazy heavy and would have to be operated on a converter, which I frankly don’t trust for longer term heavy use.

I did bring a small assortment of hand sewing items, such as needles, scissors and common thread colors. Measuring tapes, needle size gauge, stitch markers, etc… also came. They don’t add much weight or bulk and it’s annoying to have to weight to get to a store when you want it now. I also threw in some oddball tools, like my lucet and darning egg.

Happily, everything arrived safe and sound and customs had no issues with it. Bizarrely, a box labelled as containing unspun wool, bags of yarn, several spindles, a ball winder and more didn’t cause concern. Our box with blankets and sheets, however, was sent back to the US. Weird, right?