A kissing book.

Valentine's Day!
I don't know what ya'll did for your sweety-pies today,
but I tortured mine for over four hours with needles.
So romantic, right?
I did feel bad about all the pain-causing,
so afterwards I got take-out Thai food,
watched a movie on the couch with her,
and then read a few chapters of The Princess Bride aloud.
I know you love the movie,
(otherwise we're not cool),
but the book is awesome, too.
The dialogue is almost the same,
there's tons of backstory,
and it's somehow even more absurd.
No kidding.

The tattoo is not yet finished,
and it's just a crappy iphone photo,
but you get the idea.
I know I always say it,
(and it's not always true)
but since we're married,
I'm pretty f'n sure I'll get a better photo soon.
The book pictured in the tattoo isn't The Princess Bride,
it's of a not-yet-written book.
But once it IS written,
it'll probably be a "kissing book".
I'll keep you posted.
Happy Valentine's Day, everyone*.























*unless you're not into The Princess Bride,
in which case, you're probably alone,
and deserve to be.

First weekend in June.

Oh man, there's been some serious neglect of this blog for a while.

This past weekend was pretty crazy,
Meryl and I participated in Northern Spark,
Minneapolis' first annual all night art festival.
Meryl was one of the printers working on a project called Call and Answer,
created by Amanda Lovelee.
Here's a photo she snapped of us around midnight,
before Meryl read at the peoptry reading that was also a part of it and started at 1am.
There was also square dancing and pie.
And all of that was just at MCBA.
There was stuff city-wide.
We hit up as much as possible before 4am,
and then went home exhausted.













Sunday was the Cucch's 31rst birthday,
and he came to MPLS to celebrate.
No kidding.
Between birthday brunches and vegan cupcakes
and multiple flat tire bike rides,
we were able to get a few more hours in on his goonies chestpiece.











I also got lasered this week.
I had a couple joke tattoos on my leg,
and then some a-hole in CT said he could do a cover up
but only ended up making it WAY worse.
"I gotch you"
oh, you got me all right.
Got me good.
So now I'm trying to lighten everything from the knee to ankle.
And you know what?
It hurts.
And it's all swollen.
yuck.
Check this out:


















But really, that doesn't look too bad, right?
How about this lovely view?
That's my f'n heal,
being swallowed by what can only be described as what should be my ankle.

black and grey and red all over.

I tattooed poor Spencer for 7 hours yesterday.

He only has one other tattoo,

and that one took less than 2 hours,

so this was a whole new kind of fun.

A creepy skull tree sitting on a ravine tattoo.

(con mushrooms)

Immediately following his tattoo,

tornado sirens started going off,

and the sky was so apocalyptic looking.

I didn't get a good photo of the weird greenish clouds happening

since I was trying to avoid hail stone marks on my camera (and face),

but by the time I got to MCBA,

things were looking pretty different.

I then helped Meryl finish up our latest mail art,

which you'll either receive in your mailbox,

or be able to check out here in a week or so.

This is also the very last photo ever taken of Meryl in her 20's.

She's officially 30 years old today!

Skin to Paper

I had a super busy, fun day at the shop today,
and took lots of photos of everything,
but I left immediately after to meet up with Meryl at MCBA,
and didn't upload the pictures off of the camera.
But we worked on our new mail art project till 11:20pm,
and I'm super stoked on how it's coming out.
Here's a shot of Meryl getting it done.
Long days, kids.
I'll post some tattoo photos tomorrow.
It's well after 2am,
I just finished some tea,
and I'm headed to bed.

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

We finished (my wife) Meryl's chestpiece once we returned from our trip, and now it's all healed up.
"Some little language such as lovers use" is a line from Virginia Woolf's The Waves.
I think it took just under 6 hours total tattoo time.



Maybe someday literary tattoos will overtake band tattoos in popularity...?
Or maybe that's just a hopeful fantasy of mine,
and there will never be any end to bad cd cover art and logos being reproduced as tattoos.
Well, give me the dorky tattoos all day long.
Birds, books, and plant life,
creepy animals, lighthouses, and old things,
and I'm having a good time.

Working Hard and Making Dirt

Weekend?
Not this week.
I tattooed Jen yesterday,
and then Meryl today.
Tomorrow starts the work week all over again,
but it's not exactly back to work,
since I never really left.

But finally finishing Meryl's black swan tattoo was a big accomplishment.
We started it sometime last summer.
So 8 months, and 25+ hours of tattooing later....



I'll get a healed photo of the entire thing soon.
After the tattoo session,
we went out to dinner to celebrate being done.
Then I headed over to Ryan's,
who was spending his evening putting together a compost tumbler for me.
I'll post photos once I paint the barrel.
Louderhorn Inn will be making some of the sexiest dirt in MPLS this year,
thanks to Ryan.