John's grandma was a cool lady.

So one of the guys at work wanted to get a tattoo in memory of his grandma who lost her battle with cancer. He was close to her and told me about this one thing she used to say all the time, "you can't win for losing." He wanted that translated into a tattoo somehow and this is what we came up with. He said it had to be purple, her favorite color and the ribbon should be crocheted, since that's what she did to take her mind off things when it got bad. He originally wanted the lettering to be a cursive or script, but I broke out the old Rope font and it worked as a perfect yarn substitute. I will give myself some latitude regarding the linework on the knitting needles; it was his first tattoo and hard to keep him in one place. Not an excuse, but I still feel weird about restraining someone while doing linework. I need to get over that. Regardless, everyone liked it and I think his grandma would be happy with it.

I had the honor of doing what might be considered a memorial tattoo a few days ago. My sister came to me with the idea and I really thought it would be fitting and fun to do.A while back her house was burglarized and they let the dog run away. Or stole it. Or someone else stole it. Or something. So poor Maggie Mae was never seen again. Either way, it's sad. It's been some time since that happened and she decided to immortalize her beloved pet's memory.

And here it is:

Some updates on the Bobcat arm, et al.

Forgot to post these up earlier in the week for those 3 people that follow this blog. I had the opportunity to get some more work added to my brother's lower traditional patchwork sleeve. I'm excited to get the entire arm done, tied together with random things, traditional filler, and floating words here and there. So far it's coming together pretty well. I'll shoot the three most recent ones up now and keep everyone (yes, all three of you who read this, maybe) apprised of the progress over the next weeks and months until it's all the way done.

First is the "Winning Hand", ace of spades over queen of hearts.

Then a roll of "13" escaping.

And finally a pretty classic shark-faced bomb.

That's it for now. Looking at doing some more exciting stuff next week. Stay tuned.

How to represent and NOT get shot...

So my boy Nano wanted to rep the 210. Not a big deal except he's not a G. He's an H (hipster). He came up with a really cool idea for showing his San Anto pride in the most innocuous way possible via a cool bluebird from this N.A.S.A. video. We doctored it a bit to reflect the "210" status and everyone was happy with the results. It was fun to do something a little different.