dribbling poison and blood...

Jordan wanted to have a full sleeve, and keep it Nordic themed.
So we're completing his arm with the story of Thor's fishing trip.
Sea serpents, giants, ox heads as bait.
Here's Jörmungandr, Thor's enemy.
It wraps around his forearm,
and yes, there's a severed ox head on the end of a fish hook in there, too.
That's officially badass.
One more session, and we'll have it finished,
and I'll post fully healed photos soon.

Empty Nesters (for now)

An entire (busy!) week with no blog post?!?

There's too much to share, so I'll stick with the few things I have photos of.

First, Meryl and I are feeling kind of alone in this house tonight.
Casey packed up (some of her stuff) and left for her bicycle trip Saturday.
She'll be gone for at least 4 months.
Adam from Queens was in town and staying with us over the weekend, but he left early this morning.
So now it's just me, Meryl, and Shamira.
Later this month it'll be an overlapping, overbooked visitor extravaganza, but we'll have some quiet time to prepare.

So I picked up the frozen tattooed skin Wednesday night.
I started the Krowtann 2000 process today, and here's a gross photo of all that:


Speaking of boob tattoos, Caitlin's painting that she gave me arrived from Taiwan on Thursday!
It's super textured, really big, and looks even better in person.
Dead birds are sexy.
Thanks Caitlin!!


Adam was here the weekend Casey arrived, so he thought he'd help send her off as well.
He also decided to get ANOTHER aircraft safety tattoo.



Ryan and Rebecca spent a bunch of time with all of us this week as well.

We collected 100 year old chimney bricks from a gutted house in their neighborhood and put them in my front yard.
You can see some of them used for edging already to the left of the pile.

We got to play on their teeter-totter that Ryan made.

And Adam took this (very) candid shot of us hanging out in their living room.
That's me on the left sitting behind Meryl.

Following the Mississippi South of Here

It was a jam-packed week.

Meryl and I celebrated our 3 year wedding anniversary on Wednesday,
we did dinner out and had a nice walk around the mill ruins.

I did tons of tattooing even though I had two sleeve cancellations.
I filled the time with mostly little things.
Flowers and words were the big players this week.




Today, Ryan and Rebecca picked us up, and we headed down to Red Wing,
an historic town famous for shoes and stoneware.
We did some MANtiquing, of course.
We also did some dangerous archaeological digging (Meryl got injured) in this area where the rejected pottery ended up. We found ceramic pieces, antique bricks, a crazy red layered rock, and deer teeth.
Later on, while hiking, we traded a discarded bubble maker to some kid for the scoop on this really long cave.
Ryan and I have decided that we need some caving gear, or at least flashlights, on us at all times from now on. It's hard to be professional explorers when we use cell phones and cameras to light the way.

Ryan picking up garbage and making pretty bubbles


The cave kept going and going.


My silhouette from inside the cave, no flash


A different (man-made) cave entrance on a different mountain, but we didn't enter this one.


After all that, we came home, grilled up some tofu, mushrooms, and corn, had a fire, and enjoyed the late May evening.


This week is going to be at least as busy, if not more so.

I pick up the surgically removed tattooed skin on Wednesday.
I bought Krowtann 2000 for the ordeal, and will obviously post photos of the entire process.
Meryl bought me a shadow box (as an anniversary gift, how dope is that?!) for it to be displayed in.

Adam from Queens arrives Thursday. He's been to MN 4 times (or more) so far in 2009 alone, so anyone else competing for "Most Visits" will have to aim for a Silver Medal.
He's also winning for "Most Postcards", and the slightly less sought after "Shamira's Favorite Person Award".

Casey has a going away party Friday night at Java J's, and then leaves MPLS on Saturday for CT before her train ride to LA. Come by and wish her luck on her bike trip.

more like WHINE-flu.

There's nothing I heart more than the bird flu.
Except MAYBE this whole avian/swine flu mix that's going around.
Pigs and birds, mutating influenza viruses?
Pig farmers crying about people eating less pigs, Minnesota being sold out of those paper masks, everyone blaming Mexico.
That's my flavor of absurdity.

I've done a bunch of drawings now in this theme,
and had a couple hanging up in my station.
This one got claimed last week, and today was my first availability.



Tomorrow I won't be at the shop, since I'll be getting tattooed by Tim Biedron all day long.
I won't tell you where, so you won't stop in and see the tears flowing.

It's also the last day I have to work on the final touches of the Art-a-Whirl stuff.
Lots of pictures of that coming tomorrow.

Progress Shot.

I was slow at the shop today.
Actually, so was Todd.

So we planned out how we're going to make bird houses out of books.
Amy from Northampton got that bird and book tattoo, and I've been sketching ideas for these ever since.
I will be posting pictures as soon as we make them.

Later on, I started this piece on Kyle Mack, Ben Rettke's apprentice. He's pretty rad.
He wanted a sheep getting literally brain-washed.



I look forward to finishing it. That brain is going to be so clean, it's going to shine!

Back in the M.P.L.S

Oh man.
My very nice wife picked me up from the airport tonight, even though she was exhausted and had arrived hours earlier from the same place, with nothing but the bus (and cold) meeting her there.
She passed out before I got many stories told, even though I was talking faster than ever.
I'll be at the shop all week, with East Coastness pumping through my veins, and trying not to stumble over my words.

I got some of the tattoos from this week in decent photographic evidence.
Mostly because I didn't take most of them.

It's 1:38 am, I had a looooong day, and my bed is calling me, but I wanted to deposit some of the pictures up here.

Healing pics of the giant sperm whale on Rich's leg.
I got home to find the pictures in my email waiting for me, and looking way better than the ones I took after the 5 or 6 hour session the other day. It on an entire water sleeve, including the anchor on his foot.


Dan is another one of those long time clients that had plenty of embarrassing stories about me to tell the Off the Map crew. Jay and Tina drove up from CT to hang out, and it was a mini Wallingford reunion.

He even wore a dead bird shirt. Those two are the bestest and nicest, and I enjoyed the bunch of us going out to dinner that night, and even a bar or two. Here's a picture inside some weird tunnel bar of Northampton. Meryl and I will be staying with them in just three short weeks when we return East for more holidays.


Michelle and Aunt Tracy came up for Michelle's red-winged blackbird and poppy piece. We drew it on with Sharpie markers, and it got bigger and bigger than originally planned for, so we ran out of time and pain tolerance after a bunch of hours. But no matter, she's already visited Minnesota once for tattoos, and I have plans to return East. It won't be unfinished for long.


Amy's (mostly healed) book-carrying bird tattoo. Another one that was drawn on with markers, which seems to always come out way bigger than planned.


Yoda.
On Big Dean, on the same arm as the Stormtrooper. He was also nice enough to hang around while I packed up Sunday, and then he drove me to the bus station where I headed to Boston.

I got to stay with Randall Sunday night, which is always an absurd little adventure.

As expected, all of the girls' shirts got snatched up. Ada took lots of pictures during a late night dead bird session one night at Mike's house, and then drove me all the way back to the Maynard house at like 2:30 am. And she had to work a few hours later.
This seriously barbaric photo was in my email when I got home to MN.