{packing plenty of martha}

one thing that hit me the other day: i won't have access to any of my crafting + art supplies for the 5 months that i spend this year in germany. or next year. or the years beyond that. not good. i have drawers filled with stuff acquired throughout my lifetime that i cannot tote over, only to have to pack and cart back home on the plane. makes no sense. i cannot expect to land abroad and find martha stewart supplies in all of their gray and soft green amazingness. craft stores in germany are a bit uninspiring for the most part, or they are extremely hard to find. paper products there are quite sad. you rarely walk into a store and find letterpressed goods. it's rare to find anything that even remotely manages to look and feel marthaesque. i'm lucky though because hannover has a large craft store downtown called idee (creativmarkt) with two floors stocked with plenty of inspiring things so i will most certainly have access to stuff that i like. just not familiar things. and no martha. plus a lot of the tools i've featured here in these photos are sold under different names but are so much more expensive in germany because of the sucky dollar right now. on the flip side however, i feel more creative when i am in germany because i cannot run to michael's or a.c. moore anytime i please. i am forced to do more for myself, no short cuts, and often this taps a part of my brain that gets lazy here in america. to prepare for my life there, i decided yesterday to do something completely against my grain and i went out and purchased duplicates of products i already have, and some products i've been wanting. it was hard for me to make myself do this as i am quite conservative when it comes to spending money believe it or not. now i can bring these things to germany and leave them there without having to lug them back to america again. now i'm starting to think of other things that i may want to carry along with me. fabric for sure. you can find some of my favorite american designers sold at online shops in germany but again, with the euro i will spend double the price if i purchase them there. better to just bring fabric with me instead. and patterns. and design books. 99.9% of design books are in german. i can't believe all that is involved in living in two countries. it's overwhelming, fun, expensive, exciting, and wayyyy different than if i were to just move from one country to another because i could pack everything and just wait for it to arrive on a ship over there. i can't wait to soon live this experience because i'm getting tired of blogging about it without being over there. i want to pull my place together, set everything up... only 25 more days....