The healing journey of a widowed, unschooling badass in Delaware.
While Kristen toils on a big project at By Her Hand Tattoos, I am on the road, running errands and quietly keeping an eye on the phone and email.
Big thanks to Corbit Calloway Memorial Library for providing a cute place for me to sit.
Between duties, I’m thoroughly enjoying Kafka’s Letter to the Father.
This week, Kristen received an assignment that was close to my heart.
The Story of Ferdinand was one of my sons’ favorite books. A new client brought us two of the illustrations to recreate. Kristen’s accuracy in honoring the original drawings is stunning.
We had a successful day catching up on weekend messages, booking clients, and creating art…until a snag.
Now, instead of blogging, I’m tracking down an email bug that has our main communication medium frozen.
For now, enjoy the initial peony additions (double line cleanup to come) Kristen worked on today:
When we opened By Her Hand Tattoos in May of 2023, Kristen brought an amazing core of clients with her from Dover to Wilmington. In Delaware, it is no small feat to convince someone to drive 60 minutes out of their way for anything but french fries on the boardwalk.
We’re slowly building a local reputation and the number of people getting their first tattoos from Kristen has been remarkable.
We haven’t leaned into social media, except for the fact that Instagram is the perfect platform to show off Kristen’s creations.
As our main outlet, it was exciting to approach a milestone like 1,000 followers. At 999, I made a short request on my personal Facebook page to recruit a couple more friends to follow. Most of my FB friends are real and local and it was encouraging to see our number pop up to 1,007 (the banner pic is already archival).
We’re not obsessed with metrics, but we are proud of an organic growth that is bringing us to light in the community.
This year has been a parade of novice excursions: business ownership, living in a blended family, continuing my white belt journey in jiu-jitsu, and taking on goaltending as a primary position in soccer.
It’s an exciting place to be as I approach my mid 40s. New challenges are constantly arising: fixing a clothes dryer, installing a dishwasher, and various other repairs were other first-times this year.
The process is rarely comfortable and never smooth, but the results compound to make me more capable to face the next obstacle.
I haven’t been taking time to play with Lego and it shows.
For the month of October, I’ll be working with my sons and other homeschoolers to build 31 distinct sculptures.
This will be our third time participating in Delaware Fun-A-Day and I’m excited to see what we come up with.
Today’s park day gathering was a feast of interesting sights.
Most of my process for choosing my first tattoo is composed of all the tattoos I don’t want.
I didn’t find any great ideas in this book about literary tattoos, but the story about a woman getting Eric Carle to draw his Very Hungry Caterpillar on her is cute.
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We have cute, wonky coffee cups.
We do not have cute coasters.
EDIT: We found some very cool, silver coasters and I discovered that where I place my coffee is way more important to me than I had known.
Stay tuned for pictures.
We’ve got our space.
It was a busy and rewarding day as we positioned the furniture and supplies that we’ve been gathering for months.
There’s much yet to do, but we feel so close to our dream of owning and operating our own business.