Two Hands, Two Crowns, Two Tattoos

A week ago today I visited the private studio of Lydia Stalingrad, formally of Utility Tattoo here in Halifax. My very wonderful friend Krista Leger, who has two tattoos herself came with me to tell me distracting stories, take some photos and calm the anxiety of a tattoo newbie. (All the photos here were taken by her.) I first thought of getting these tattoos exactly two years ago when I was staying in a cabin in Northern Saskatchewan, I started working on the designs then and last week I was finally ready to make the commitment.

On a technical note for tattoo geeks out there, getting the tattoo on my dominate arm (left) hurt noticeably more than the one on my right arm. However, my left tattoo has being healing very fast whereas my right arm was bruised and swollen in the following days.

My motivations for getting the tattoos are a combination of being too personal to share + probably boring to other people so I won’t go into the reasoning here. Though, yes it does relate to my company name Two Hands Two Crowns.























I got these in one sitting so I'll be going back for tiny touch-ups once they're healed. I'll probably post photos of the finished products in four or five weeks time. I’m quite pleased and excited for them to be all healed up!

My Feline Valentine

Last week Hank, my beloved cat, asked me if I would be his Valentine. I thought this was pretty romantic of him, considering our relationship is already quite serious (we sleep together every night, you know.) I, of course said yes and started my search for a cat appropriate Valentine. Late that night I woke up to see Hank using my computer, though I couldn’t make out what was on the screen. I pretended to be asleep.

Well, this morning Hank and I exchanged gifts and boy does he know me well! He ordered this beautiful, collectible, embossed, vintage Airmail envelope for me off ebay. (Seriously, click on it to see the details.) I gave Hank this equally beautiful vintage Valentine and a heart-shaped bag of cat treats. Hank's gift will be added to my rare Airmail envelope collection soon, as seen in the bottom right photo.

Anything but Idle Hands

In the last few weeks I’ve been crocheting-away at the blanket I’m working on. However I encountered two hurdles, firstly I misplaced my 6mm hook and both yarn stores in the city were sold out, so I took an involuntarily two week break from the blanket. (I did eventually buy a new hook and then found my old one immediately afterwards.) Secondly, the Halifax Transit service has been on strike for the last ten days meaning I don’t have that time during bus rides to work on it and more generally I have less free time now that I’m walking everywhere.

All this brings me to say that I’m actually going to put the whole blanket project on hold. I recently accepted an invitation to participate in an exhibition at the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto that runs from April 21 to July 15. The exhibition theme is the exploration of Canadiana through craft mediums. I have a piece in mind I’ll be making especially for the show, and you may have guessed it, it will be crocheted. I’ll be using Canadian wool to make a three dimensional form which will be shown in a display case. I don’t want to say too much more about the piece but I’ll definitely blog about the finished work.

Here is a picture of about half of the blanket triangles I was able to get done.

Feministory

A couple weeks ago I submitted a one page comic to Bitch Magazine, out of Portland, Oregon. Every issue has a theme and a feature called “Adventures in Feministory”, the theme for the Fall 2012 issue will be “Elemental”. After much thought I decided the subject of my comic would be the career of Rosalind Franklin; the Jewish-British scientist who worked on decoding the molecular structure of DNA in the 1950s.

In addition to the finished comic, as part of my proposal I also drew up these portraits of two other women I’d be happy to make comics about. I did these drawings with ink and brush and tinted them afterwards in Photoshop.

I won’t put the finished comic here in case it is selected, though it will be a month or so until I find out. Cross your fingers for me!

Secret Message Give Away

I made multiples of this “secret message” as a silkscreen test and now I have more than a girl could need. When placed in your window it beams a positive message to you throughout the day, but by night it is merely a discreet floral print.

I’m giving away one to each of the first five people who comment below, be sure to send me your mailing address to my email, meagsfitzgerald [at]shaw.ca.

Student Day of Action!

If you are a student, if you have been a student, or if you plan on being a student at a post-secondary institution in Canada it's really darn important that you show up to your city's event on February 1st!

Positives Attract

About three years ago, on a trip to Vancouver I bought a couple magnets from The Regional Assembly of Text, probably my favourite store ever. I liked them so much that every time I visited Vancouver I made sure to buy a few more. They’re made from vintage papers, rubber stamps and a 1 ½ inch button maker, with a magnet glued to where the pin would be. I eventually bought enough that could spell my first, middle and last name with a few odd letters leftover. I love anagrams and I take an odd pleasure in rearranging these magnets to spell various words.

This fall I found out that the Student Union at NSCAD (the University I’m at) has a 1 ½ inch button maker that students can use for the tiny fee of $0.30 a button! I got so excited at the prospect of making my own lettered magnets that I started to collect alphabet stamps and dead-stock accounting paper, to best mimic my store bought ones. (And no, I don’t want to put The Regional Assembly of Text out of business, it’s just that it might be many years until I visit Vancouver again.)

In the last two months I’ve made about 45 magnets, ensuring I can spell just about any short phrase that comes to mind. I’m going to make more this week of numbers zero to nine and then that’s it, I’m cutting myself off!

For now, it is clear to me that I have gone bananas for magnets and that my collection has far exceeded my little metal white board. But one day I’m sure I’ll be the proud owner of a vintage avocado refrigerator that will undoubtedly double as a playful message board.

Hibernation Activity

I’ve started crocheting a blanket out of the yarn I bought while I was in Edmonton for the winter break. I hope to finish it this semester in all those pockets of “dead time” in waiting rooms or on bus rides. I've never embarked on such a large piece before but I’ve broken it up into tiny triangle sections to make it easy to work on while I’m on the go.

I chose the colours because of their wintery-palette and I think the finished product will fit in with my bedroom.

I’m not using a blanket pattern but instead have taken inspiration from this print I saw on Etsy, it’s by the shop Two Ems. And as far as technique goes, its about as simple as it gets, I'll be single-crocheting the entire thing. Check back in a couple of months for a progress report!