Tattoo design

Hello again folks.  Sorry I've been such a bad blogger of late.  I haven't forgotten about the blog or lost interest in it; my absence is down to a mixture of not being very well, getting a very demanding job, and my creative juices not flowing all that well.  It's mid-winter here, so when I try to tell my brain that it ought to do stuff it says "What do you mean do stuff?  You're supposed to be hibernating, remember.  We've talked about this before."  My brain has a point.  If I could get away with plugging in a beer fridge beside my bed and hiding under the duvet until July goes away, that's what I would be doing right now.

But I haven't been totally idle.  For starters, I designed my first tattoo.  I've always wanted to get my favourite verse from the Havamal inked on me:

Deyr fé, deyja frændr, deyr sjálfr et sama; ek veit einn, at aldri deyr: dómr um dauðan hvern.

Carolyne Larrington translates it thus:

Cattle die,

kinsmen die

you yourself die;

I know one thing

which never dies:

the fate of the honored dead.

Inspired by rune stones, I drew up a preliminary design.

As you might expect, it looks much better written in Futhark.  the original is from the Codex Regius, which uses the Latin alphabet.  I took this along to Trinity Ink, where Joe, who is all kinds of awesomesauce, turned it into this:

If you're in the Wellington region and want some custom tattoo work, I highly recommend Trinity Ink.  The customer service is very good and so is the work.  Have a look at their Facebook page and check out the shading - it's really something!