Weekend in Hamilton

We went up to Hamilton over Easter for several reasons. It's always nice to get away and do a bit of camping...

Noodle had a great time, and was very well behaved on the journeys up and down

The second reason was the VW Nationals, which we missed most of because we set off to late on the Friday, then Saturday's activities ended up taking longer than anticipated (see below)

Here are some photos from the Sunday part of the VW show:





And the final reason was for me to visit Tika Management to get my ta moko applied!
A ta moko is Maori tattoo. These are not just art, they are unique to, and have meaning and significance to the wearer and are considered taonga (treasure).
I've been thinking about this for some time and planning generally what I wanted it to look like, but I left it up to the artist (Jaxon) to produce a design for me.
We worked through a couple of options, but I didn't see the final design until we arrived at the studio on the Saturday morning.

This is what he came up with:

This is Jaxon drawing the design onto my skin:

And how it translated to skin:

After a karakia (sort of prayer and blessing), the outlining was done by Moera Anderson:

Then Jaxon did the shading. Here it is half done:

And here's the end result.

The meaning is mostly contained in the gaps, not the black parts.Here's the highlights:

The Yorkshire rose represents me,
The gap below is our journey to Aotearoa
The second gap is our ongoing journey,
The bottom black swirl is Melanie.
The swirly koru patterns usually represent new life or birth. The ones near the bottom are our whanau (family and friends) and cats and dog :)
The double swirl on the top right under the rose is my mum and dad (they are joined together)