Rawok

@beez Amazing!

Could'nt find any knitting thread so here it goes :)
I thought we could (provided there are any nerdy knitters here) share photos of ongoing and finished projects, patterns, useful tips and rant about things going wrong and frogged projects, or maybe ones severe case of SSS (single sock syndrom). It would be nice if everyone started of with a little introduction.
I'll try to start. My grandmother tought me to knit and crochet when I was about ten and I've been doing it on and off for about 20-ish years. Still learning new techniques tho. My favorite material is wool and right now on my needles I have a pair of wristwarmers that have to be ready by saturday since it is a birthday present. They are done in two colours and the figure (called Hattifnattar) is from the finnish childrens story Mumin. I have redone them twice already and finally wrote my own pattern since they came out HUGE.
Also, if there are any ravelers (ravelry.com) here, feel free to look me up there. :)
And if you have a favorite podcast about knitting, please share! I really enjoy knit.fm. and I'm going to try out Knitmore Girls.

Remember how we were talking about Eagles earlier? BAM! I got an eagle fighting a dragon the other day. If y'all didn't see it in the latest tattoo lowdown thread, here it is! From flash originally drawn by Tom Berg.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Oni Head by Stewart Robson guesting at Blackheart tattoo before the SFO convention.
This shot is from today, healed.
BOOM in your face, @Cork you're not the only one with a massive Japanese tattoo this month, haha!

There is this really fantastic book I read last year as part of my research for something else I'm writing that discusses the concept of identity as neuroscience understands it in great detail, at a layman's level. It's called The Self Illusion, by Bruce Hood, and it draws many of the same conclusions about the myth of identity as the article.
While the conclusions he draws are still contested in some circles, I don't think there's more evidence against them than there is for them. The 'tl;dr' take-away is that identity is an extremely vulnerable construct assembled from countless exterior pressures and events, organized into a narrative that our brains tell us in order to help us make sense of new information. It does this with an aim toward efficiency and survival, rather than accuracy; it's remarkable how fallible human memory can be (and memory can be entirely overwritten or altered with astonishing ease). It's this way by design, though; these things make us adaptable to new circumstances, more resilient in overcoming traumas, etcetera. There is no little person inside of us with a set register of traits, operating switches and levers in us with pre-defined consistency. We are an accumulation of impulses defined by experience, and what we think we know or feel about those experiences is more malleable than we realize.
One of the central points of the book insofar as the studies it uses is that it's extremely easy to challenge even the most dominant values and beliefs of someone's identity under the right conditions, social pressures being what they are. Given the right parameters, a person will do things they'd never believe themselves capable of otherwise -- for better or worse. It could be that the fast and furious pace of social pressures we're experiencing these days via social media are responsible for causing people to seek out ways to define themselves in a more lasting manner...
...but it could also be that the fast and furious pace of social pressures we're experiencing these days via social media are pressuring people to get tattoos who wouldn't otherwise get them. This, I think, is a point the article probably glosses over too handily. People polish up the details of their lives and shovel them onto facebook, instagram, pinterest, and other people sit around judging their own lives based on these idealized representations from others. Someone still trying to figure out who they are spends six hours a day on pinterest, imagining what their life could be like, and somehow a dandelion-turning-into-birds tattoo becomes part of the landscape of social pressures that they're using to define themselves. It could have less to do with a lack they're filling, in other words, than a lack created by this idealized lifestyle they're constantly consuming.
This is a long and rambling post, I know. I do think it's relevant to tattoos, and other people's reactions to tattoos, though; I think there's something very interesting about imposing permanent images on one's self, and folding them into your self-image, regardless of whether they have deliberate meaning or not. Inevitably they'll commemorate something, even if that isn't why they were gotten; even if that something is just the moment in time at which they were tattooed, and even if that moment in time wasn't special for any reason other than that the tattoo was being done. And that act -- commemoration, deliberate or otherwise -- is definitely a thing. The word itself revolves around memory, after all, and memory is the essential thing from which we construct identity. The tattoo is permanent, the memory consequently more likely to stick around, and I suppose that could matter, even if we never intended it to.
Speaking generally, people tend to view permanent things with some wariness. I think they do that for a lot of reasons, but one of those reasons may be that it affixes them to some identity or other. People are prone to being heavily influenced by the social opinions and trends of others, obviously, and I think people don't like the idea of being trapped by any given identity. It makes them nervous. It feels final, and that finality is not conducive to adapting to the social fabric that surrounds us. I can understand why someone might look at a tattoo and be bewildered by the choice to mark one's self in a way that makes being a social chameleon less easy to do. They probably find that viscerally strange, even setting aside the social implications from earlier decades.
...which makes it interesting, to me, that so many people embrace deliberately changing themselves in such a permanent way. I can't think of many other ways that a person can change themselves with such permanent intention. You can make lifestyle changes, sure, but they're usually internal...certainly not so publicly observable.
Don't get me wrong, here...I'm not suggesting that tattoos necessarily change anything about the tattooed individual, or that the choice to be tattooed necessarily indicates anything deeper than the desire to just get a really awesome tattoo. I just think it probably can, given what we know about how human beings create their sense of self, and I find it really fascinating to think about what a unique relationship tattoos could have with the way our own subconscious forms our narrative of identity. I think there's probably something special about the mental attitude of anyone who can fearlessly embrace a permanent change to their self image as it's perceived by others.
That all being wordily said, I think it's pretty dumb to try to psychoanalyze anyone based on the actual tattoos they have. These are interesting concepts in theory, but people are just so different...I don't know that I'd ever be comfortable making assumptions about this kind of thing with anyone, ever.
Anywho. Long-winded insomnia blabbering over!

Got this from Horimatsu in October. It was a great experience, he is such an awesome dude with some pretty cool stories to tell.
Also I got this cattoo on a caturday so I kind of won the internet that day :D

edit: can't figure out why the picture is all wonky but if one clicks it again for full size it looks like it is supposed to...
edit2: oh, and it's located on the outside of the calf.

Got this from Horimatsu in October. It was a great experience, he is such an awesome dude with some pretty cool stories to tell.
Also I got this cattoo on a caturday so I kind of won the internet that day :D

edit: can't figure out why the picture is all wonky but if one clicks it again for full size it looks like it is supposed to...
edit2: oh, and it's located on the outside of the calf.

You have all probably seen this all ready but here is the session on my back piece from a week ago when I was visiting Rudy Fritsch at his shop Original Classic in Trieste, Italy. Had a super good stay in the city and the shop is truly amazing, I could be there for hours just looking at all of the originals on the walls from some of the best in the culture and also from Rudy himself. We had lunch the day after the session and he sure is a very interesting and inspiring person too.

Beyond happy with how this is progressing! Next session with Iain Mullen, who is the other part of this collaboration, will be in Stockholm quite soon and then the three of us converge during the Scottish Tattoo Convention in Edinburgh early next year to put the finishing touches on this project. I am a lucky guy :)

@Mick Weder I'm not that advanced yet but I'm sure I'll get there. For now I just shiver in a corner, clinging to the bottle.

Pre tattoo I try to get a good nights sleep. Post tattoo I get a cold (used to be beer but people on this site changed my mind, it just sounded soo good (and it was)) cider, some greasy food (must have melted cheese in it) and a two hour nap to get rid of the slight fever I always get.

@Mick Weder I'm not that advanced yet but I'm sure I'll get there. For now I just shiver in a corner, clinging to the bottle.

Whilst in the shower, can't forget that bit @Rawok ;)

Thanks! So many cool artist, got myself a few new favorites @CShaw König is amazing! I'm not even that far away, might have to make a trip south next summer :) @Pugilist It does make sense, I think one views almost everything differently when one becomes aware of...well, how the world is at the moment and maybe how one would like to see it changed. And Virginia Elwoods art is insane, thanks for informing about her.

Thanks! So many cool artist, got myself a few new favorites @CShaw König is amazing! I'm not even that far away, might have to make a trip south next summer :) @Pugilist It does make sense, I think one views almost everything differently when one becomes aware of...well, how the world is at the moment and maybe how one would like to see it changed. And Virginia Elwoods art is insane, thanks for informing about her.

Got this from Horimatsu in October. It was a great experience, he is such an awesome dude with some pretty cool stories to tell.
Also I got this cattoo on a caturday so I kind of won the internet that day :D

edit: can't figure out why the picture is all wonky but if one clicks it again for full size it looks like it is supposed to...
edit2: oh, and it's located on the outside of the calf.

...a TED speaker asks:
Juan Enriquez: Your online life, permanent as a tattoo | Talk Video | TED.com
I thought it was an intriguing talk only because often, the negative reactions to tattoos have to do with them being "forever," and "what if you change your mind?", etc. It made me think about the young people I've known who've passed away -- their Twitter feeds, their Facebook profiles -- their online selves are frozen in time. The girl who passed away 12 years ago, would she still like those same TV shows she talks about on Twitter, or be comfortable showing those Facebook profile pictures? In the grand scheme, it doesn't f^cking matter -- those things show who she was at that time, and I don't think there's anything shameful or regrettable or embarrassing about that.
We're all humans, and we all grow and change our minds and adopt new attitudes. Everything we leave behind -- tattoos, Facebook pages, message board posts, blogs, pictures -- is just a big, fat smearing of evidence of how we've personally tripped through life. Like the slime trail a slug leaves behind.
Yes, you can quote me on that last one. I know it's elegant as f^ck. ::sips tea, pinky out::

Got this from Horimatsu in October. It was a great experience, he is such an awesome dude with some pretty cool stories to tell.
Also I got this cattoo on a caturday so I kind of won the internet that day :D

edit: can't figure out why the picture is all wonky but if one clicks it again for full size it looks like it is supposed to...
edit2: oh, and it's located on the outside of the calf.

Got this from Horimatsu in October. It was a great experience, he is such an awesome dude with some pretty cool stories to tell.
Also I got this cattoo on a caturday so I kind of won the internet that day :D

edit: can't figure out why the picture is all wonky but if one clicks it again for full size it looks like it is supposed to...
edit2: oh, and it's located on the outside of the calf.

I finally get to give this a shot!
Dana Helmuth, 95% completed at Read Street Tattoo in Baltimore, the rest done in his private studio.

Got this from Horimatsu in October. It was a great experience, he is such an awesome dude with some pretty cool stories to tell.
Also I got this cattoo on a caturday so I kind of won the internet that day :D

edit: can't figure out why the picture is all wonky but if one clicks it again for full size it looks like it is supposed to...
edit2: oh, and it's located on the outside of the calf.

Got this from Horimatsu in October. It was a great experience, he is such an awesome dude with some pretty cool stories to tell.
Also I got this cattoo on a caturday so I kind of won the internet that day :D

edit: can't figure out why the picture is all wonky but if one clicks it again for full size it looks like it is supposed to...
edit2: oh, and it's located on the outside of the calf.

Got this from Horimatsu in October. It was a great experience, he is such an awesome dude with some pretty cool stories to tell.
Also I got this cattoo on a caturday so I kind of won the internet that day :D

edit: can't figure out why the picture is all wonky but if one clicks it again for full size it looks like it is supposed to...
edit2: oh, and it's located on the outside of the calf.

Got this from Horimatsu in October. It was a great experience, he is such an awesome dude with some pretty cool stories to tell.
Also I got this cattoo on a caturday so I kind of won the internet that day :D

edit: can't figure out why the picture is all wonky but if one clicks it again for full size it looks like it is supposed to...
edit2: oh, and it's located on the outside of the calf.

Got this from Horimatsu in October. It was a great experience, he is such an awesome dude with some pretty cool stories to tell.
Also I got this cattoo on a caturday so I kind of won the internet that day :D

edit: can't figure out why the picture is all wonky but if one clicks it again for full size it looks like it is supposed to...
edit2: oh, and it's located on the outside of the calf.

So half sleeve is coming along nicely - foo dog and goldfish recently added. Sleeve by Daniel Innis at the Pearl in Toronto.