Jananas

From Philly, Jason and I took a bus into NYC on Thursday the 21st. We’d both made tattoo appointments – Jason to get his chest piece finished by Joy at 1228 and me to have my feet done. I’ve been eyeing Daniel DiMattia‘s work for quite some time. However, he primarily works in Belgium at Calypso Tattoos which makes things a little more difficult. I first contacted him last August to see about getting an appointment with him on/around the NYC tattoo convention which is held in May. I figured that going to NYC was better than flying to Belgium! Thankfully he was able to fit me into his schedule.

On the 21st, our friend Tom kindly dropped Jason & I off at the bus stop in NYC (awesome was that the entire bus trip cost us $16 total!). Jason read and I knit on the way in. We arrived and wandered around until we found a subway stop. Two lines & two stops later, we were at Joy’s shop. Jason checked in there before walking me the 1/4mile over to the shop that Dan tattoos out of while he’s in NYC (Tattoo Culture), grabbing a quick lunch on the way. We arrived and met Dan, who was super awesome! After I finished lunch, I ran to the washroom – coming back out to find Jason looking over my designs with Dan.  The right is a more feminine design and the left more masculine. They were perfect!

Dan started inspecting my feet, trying to ensure that the stencils fit on and flowed well. Jason took off, so that he could get his own work done. Dan spent the next hour getting the stencils on my feet (purple) and drawing on some additional details (red), even spending some time sitting on the floor at my feet to make sure everything lined up.

We started on the right foot, and I’m not going to lie – it sucked! The outline took about an hour and the final dot work about 30 minutes. The only nice thing about getting tattooed is that it isn’t continuous – those little minute breaks give a bit of space to breathe. It also went a little easier once Dan changed his liner set up to be a bit more spread out, as the skin on my feet was so tough that he was having to apply a lot of pressure to get the ink through the skin.

What sucks about getting paired tattoos is that once the first is finished, you still know that you have the second one ahead of you! The second one was similar, taking about an hour and a half in total. Thankfully Jason finished earlier than I did, so he came over to hold my hand and provide support. The end result was the picture below, amazingly my feet were barely even red at the end!

The healing went pretty well. I’ve heard lots of horror stories of ‘baked potato’ feet (from the swelling) and severe itchy as friend’s feet tattoos have healed up. Mine were a little swollen and walking wasn’t fun the first few days, but nothing terrible. I avoided shoes as much as possible (which was a little difficult given that my cousin’s wedding was two days later!). The one thing I did notice was that healing itself took longer. Normally I’d flake at day 4-5 whereas these took more than two weeks! At almost four weeks post tattoo I’m happy to report that I’ve lost very little ink, so they’ve held up well.

And yes, I am in love with my feet.

More from jananas

• Antique Spinning Wheel & Yarn Winder
• The Dilemmas of Working
• Introducing Lila, the dog we found at the side of the road