So I finished up my time in Tucson after filling up my month with some good shit.
Pin was glued on 
One of the reasons I decided to stay in Tucson this long is for the busking I was doing in a public park. It’s less pressure than downtown areas (less money too) so I feel more comfortable flying a sign while I focus on practicing for a large part. I made a bit of money, the most I ever got was about $48 in four hours, lots of zero days. Most days under $10 I’d say. Most days I’d look like this.
I got a new tattoo machine and have been enjoying that quite a bit. The power supply seemed to not turn on initially, but the shroud was east to remove and I brushed some glue that was on the terminals for the AC connection and it worked fine after that.
I got some practice skin and other supplies at a supply store in Tucson after wondering if the bottle of ink I got off Amazon was legitimate. I wanted to get something I could trust before anything else. The practice skin itself was mediocre as practice material yet got me a feel for the machine before I put it in my own skin. It was also cheap, $7 for the sheet I’m using and it’s double sided. Side note that I strongly recommend not going to that store, it’s called Precision Tattoo Supply and no employee was wearing a mask. Not to mention the up charge compared to buying supplies online from reputable suppliers.
Supply store 
Suspicious ink 
Fixing the $25 supply 
The first tattoo I did with it is a word and symbol piece:
I used a Dragonhawk Extreme (Rotary), 3RL (outlines and first pass shading), 1RL (Strings) and 11RL (rounding, balancing, second pass shading) and ink that came in a stick and poke kit that I’ve used before. Used a stencil and electrum gold as the primer.
I’m concerned I wasn’t hitting deep enough a lot and that a lot of the ink will come out. We’ll see, at least now I can touch it up myself!
This was also the first time I used Vaseline while tattooing and it’s great how it contains the ink, less great in that it makes stretching a lot harder. I struggled a fair bit to get good stretches. Especially with the second tatto I gave.
When I started to tattoo this one, the person was sitting in a chair with their arm relaxed. I couldn’t rest my arm into something like I could when I did the leg tattoo. This made my lines incredibly shaky. I recognized this too late and had them sit on the floor and put their arm on the chair so I could lean over and rest my arm in a more stable position. So it’s a barbed wire S.
First setup was clunky 
This position was very stable.
I also met some cool people. I spent November with one household and this month met a few new people. One showed me a wonderful Vegan restaurant called Tumerico. Another person made me a wax stamp and we cooked together.
I spent Christmas with some friends I met. They don’t celebrate the holiday but I zoomed with my family. My parents mailed me my stocking filled with little wonderful gifts. It was a nice way to stay connected on the other side of the country,
Onward to Slab City.