Yarnmaven: Well, THAT was interesting.

I can't believe I lived this long and never got a tattoo. Perhaps it's just as well. I'm not sure I had the judgement to make a reasonable choice for myself until now. One of the perks of maturity I suppose. Pardon the bandwidth challenge, but photos follow and as usual, click to embiggen.

Inside A Million Tattoos in North Austin. They have five tattoo artists and a couple of body piercers (we won't be needing them). Their web site has examples of each artist work. They don't take reservations, so we walked in Saturday afternoon. Michael took the artwork I brought in that a friend of Kandis had worked up from my description. Michael spent about an hour and a half reworking one element of the art before he was ready for us. Us is me and Kandis. I was the only one getting inked this visit.

Michael is a student of traditional tattoo art and he knows a lot about the history of the art. He was very cool to talk to because he shared our politics and we talked about the current state of affairs for almost the entire hour and a half he took to do my tattoo. And he likes John Prine too.

How bad did it hurt?

Not that bad. Understand that I have had two children without pain medication. I can handle it. The photo on the right above appears to be me smiling, well, I am , but I am also wincing. It felt like someone was slicing my leg open with an exacto knife. But as soon as the needle was pulled away, it stopped hurting.

It still appears red around the edges because it's fresh and will look better after it has healed which is about 2-3 weeks, but here it is.

Since 4 people suggested the ankle and that is the closest guess, I held a drawing from the four and Christine won. Fair and square.

I then threw everybody else into a pot just cuz they were nice enough to comment on my birthday and Scout won. Ladies, if you'll email me with snail mail addresses, I will send your yarn prizes. And thanks for playing. And thank you to Kandis for a very cool birthday present.

But wait there's more!

I have been knitting, though not yet on my Sockapaloooza socks (I really need to get on that) but on a pattern I found at KnitNet. It's Winter Branches by Chrissy Gardiner and I am loving the knitting of it. I'm using my Peruvian Collection in Arizona Clay. Pictures come when it's finished.