First days in the Netherlands

Hello everyone!

This is the first post I write from my new home in the Netherlands! I hope to be able to blog more often now that the big move is mostly done and life (hopefully) calms down a bit. This post is basically a recap of my last week sprinkled with some pics from our new hometown.

I will start my new job on Monday... my old one officially ends on Sunday but I am on holidays since last Wednesday. And man, I don't think I could have done or do without these days off. There is and was so much to organize. 

The packers arrived last Thursday and put everything into boxes within four hours! I was hesitant to get someone to pack our stuff for us at first, but I couldn't have done it in that time nor did I have the energy for the packing. At that point we had already spent several weekends decluttering, taking stuff to charity shop and some to the rubbish tip. It felt really weird sitting on packed boxes and not being able to get anything (especially yarn!) out.

The movers loaded everything on their truck on Friday with a furniture lift. We lived on the fifth floor and putting everything on the lift was the easiest way to get everything down. Still I was very worried about our furniture. We have whole wood furniture which is really really heavy and I wasn't sure it would survive the lift...  

Letting that flat go wasn't easy. We lived there for five years which is the longest period I lived in one flat since I moved out of my parent's house in 2004. Also, it was the last flat my dad got to see (actually he even managed our moving in process, installed the kitchen and so on in 2013). So it was hard on the emotional side. 

We drove over to our new flat Friday night, camped on an air mattress and awaited the arrival of the moving company on Saturday morning. They arrived shortly after 7am and by 11am everything was unloaded and the furniture was reassembled! Plus the lights were installed and some of the furniture was doweled into the wall! They were so fast - I think it didn't hurt that they wanted to be back in Dortmund for the soccer game later that day...

Still it took us (and my mum & sister who kindly came over from Northern Germany to help us) all of the Saturday and the Sunday to unpack and find new places for everything. So much stuff! We decluttered lots and lots over the last years but there is still so much (too much...). It was (and still is) very hard to fit all our crockery, pots and so on into the new kitchen. You see, we owned our own kitchen in Dortmund - this new flat had a preinstalled kitchen which is tiny for our standards. We were able to bring our large cupboard but we are still missing several storage opportunities. I am sure we will be able to fit everything in at some point but at the moment is tight.

The best thing about our new flat is the attic!! My husband needed the office and we had to fit in books into the places where my yarn used to live. So I claimed the attic and now I have an office/craft room! I am in lovvvvvee! I will make sure to take more pictures soon! It took me ages to unpack and rearrange my yarn. I knew I had a lot of yarn but this much? Eh. I think I am good for the next couple of months (years?).

At the moment my days are spent trying to get paperwork organized (today we learnt our marriage certificate and birth certificates don't have the right format... so we have to get new ones in Germany), cleaning, rearranging and... crocheting!! Finally, finally, finally I have time to crochet again. There was far too little crochet in my life over the last months!

I decided to crochet another Star Blanket. I have made many of these already and the pattern is so relaxing and soothing. When I rearranged my stash, I discovered several skeins of Stylecraft's Life DK which are now being used for the blanket. I haven't worked with a yarn which has a wool part for quite some time so it feels a little scratchy but I bet that will be better once I have washed it. Michelle also mentioned that soaking blankets with wool parts in conditioner works wonders, so I will give that a try too. Do you know any cool tricks how to get wool to behave?

Anyway, I gotta run... more paperwork demands my attention!

Take care

Anne