Time for a Hard Launch!

Hard Launch | 5.13.25

Hello Knitting Friends!

WELL! It’s time for Portugal: A Hard Launch! I’ve been soft launching it in my classes, and sneaking it into the VERY BOTTOM of my normal emails, since the beginning of the year, but I thought it would be fun to go old school with this and keep like a moving blog/record. So here is my official hard launch post.

So! Shane and I, along with Royal, Roosevelt, and Bullingdon, are all moving to Porto, Portugal fingers crossed by end of Oct/mid November.

The pictures in this post were taken when I spent about 24 hrs in Porto back in October of 2022 with some girlfriends! Yeah - that’s it! Shane has never even been there!

So why Porto? For the simple fact that we’ve both lived in Chicago, a big world class city, for decades, and we are ready to live in a smaller city but still need easy access to an international airport. Porto is the only city in Portugal that fits the bill!

… so why Portugal in the first place?!

Continuing from my newsletter? Start reading here!

There are very few ways to get a visa to live in Europe. Shane and I have been exploring this option for years and the only viable way we could figure it out is to apply for a Digital Nomad Visa. A Digital Nomad Visa is offered to people who work virtually and can prove that they’ll still be able to make money from their virtual job working remotely - like me! Of the countries that offer this visa, Portugal felt like the right fit for us.

We’ve been working toward this since 2017 when we visited Portgual for the first time!

It was on this trip that we made friends with an American couple that had just moved to Portugal. They told us all about how the moved and how happy they are, how they were living there because they were renting out their house in Seattle and could live on the rent they were collecting. Cool! And that sounded even more appealing after Trump was elected in 2016.

But, we had some obstacles! We didn’t own a house we could rent, we had a lot of student loan debt, and I was part owner of a brick and mortar yarn store.

Fast forward to COVID! When Covid hit I was teaching 0% online. I had about 100 students who came into Knit 1 regularly and paid a for my in person classes. My classes produced a lot of Knit 1’s revenue, and because at the time I was super focused on keeping Knit 1 open I quickly figured out how to move my classes online, and by late summer/early fall 2020 I had a few online classes and was teaching one on one classes regularly.

My classes continued to grow! And I got better and better at teaching them. By the time I got fired from Knit 1 in November of 2021 I was making double my Knit 1 salary from online classes. And because there was nothing to buy and student loan payments were paused, we were saving money! After a few years we paid off $100K+ of student loan debt, and I focused on building sustainable income that would eventually prove my Digital Nomad Status when we were finally ready to move.

Shane and I have been in negotiations for a couple years now, but since Trump was elected AGAIN he was finally officially on board and I’d say at this point he’s like 82% ready to go. But the more things fall into place the readier and readier he is! Which I guess makes sense - the more questions we have answered the easier it is to imagine us actually moving!

Which you could say has lead me to this post! The more I talk about it, the more I’m normalizing it and the more it feels like it’s really happening. WHEW!

So how is AllysonDykhuizen.com & LauraAllyson.Party / LauraAllyson.com going to work?

The same! Nothing is really going to change about my virtual classes except their timings will slightly change. And my background! I won’t be able to teach evening CT classes anymore because the would be starting at 2am for me. I’ll be doing more weekday classes? Hopefully you want those! haha

Basically I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing since March of 2020, and actually since I started trying to make money from knitting in 2003, which is I’m just going to keep throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.

Nothing about LauraAllyson.Party is going to change except for Laura will be hosting the knit nights by herself. I’ll be hosting knit DAYS! And we’ll be changing the time we film our Level Ups.

Nothing about LauraAllyson.com is going to change, either, except we’re hoping to have more European based retreats since we’ll have boots on the ground there! I’ll still be back in the US at least twice a year for retreats, in fall and winter/spring.

Part of moving to Europe for us is knowing we’ll have to be flying back and forth kind of a lot to keep things moving. And that’s ok! Unless Trump tells us to fuck off and then yes I’ll absolutely fuck off!

What about Laura?!

Laura knows! She’s known for a long time that it has been my dream to live in Europe and is, of course, extremely supportive of me living my dreams! But yes! I’m absolutely devastated to leave my BFF.

We spend a lot of time together in Chicago, which will obviously have to stop. But the plan is to spend substantial amounts of time together every 6-8 weeks… FOREVER?!?!?! Our guest room in our apartment in Porto is already being called “Laura’s Room”. We’ve both set up our lives to travel a lot, which we’ve been doing for years now!

It will be hard to be away from her because I love her so much. But we both feel ready to sunset our time in Chicago, me just slightly more dramatically than she is planning to. We are both working toward life goals and are there for each other even if that is now going to turn more virtual than in person.

Progress Report:

I hit the ground running in February with the hope of an October 31st move for my household and a November 10th move for me. I very quickly realized that I needed help! I did some research and hired a company called Start Abroad in early April after I hit about 30 walls and had a million questions I couldn’t get answered. And I’m SO GLAD I did! It’s so nice to have someone to email questions when I have them, and as I’m compiling all my paperwork it’s nice to have a final list of things I need so our visa application is accepted!
We’ve now got Portuguese social security numbers!
I learned the word apostille! I’ve apostilled numerous things, including our marriage license and federal background checks! So fancy!
We’re waiting to hear back from our Portuguese bank account application
This week we should have our visa application appointment date, which should be in mid July in Houston (sad face!)
I started doing research on getting the pets across. I very quickly realized that I needed help! I did some research and hired a company called Starwood Pet Travel! For a cool… TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS they’re going to make sure my babies make it to Porto. NBD.
Needless to say, but yeah this is A) HARD and B) EXPENSIVE! But every day I KNOW that this is the right decision for us and that we are investing in our future happiness.

So there you have it! What a proper BLOG POST like it’s fucking 2011! Feels good!

Like I said, I’ll be updating periodically about my progress and, hopefully, reporting from Porto come November! More soon!

I’m Moving to Portugal: Update!