The 29th annual Chester County Restaurant Festival is coming up on Sunday, and I’m gonna be giving airbrush tattoos on Mary Bigham’s red carpet. What tattoo does a foodie get? Not a sailor’s anchor, but a FORK, naturally! Expert pixel-pusher Jason Tremblay lent me the vector art for the Restaurant Festival’s fork logo, and Dave Moroz-Henry at Barking Dog signs is cutting the stencils.

I’ll be using the sidecar rig with the five-pound nitrogen tank. Since the Restaurant Festival is a foodie event, I thought I’d dress the tank up a little bit. WITH NEEDLEPOINT! This will go on the front of the tank:

I’m using 13-count mono canvas, with a damn swanky silk/wool yarn. The canvas is two inches wide (26 threads, not counting the four I’ve folded under on each side for a finished edge.) I took it off the frame after stitching the black, and I’m already pulling it into a parallelogram after only a few rows of white background. But this yarn is stretchy; maybe if I just sew it to some stiff Velcro hook tape, that’ll pull it back straight. Blocking things with finished edges definitely is something I’d like to learn to do better.

Anyhow, if you’re in the area, come out on Sunday to get your own fork tattoo! Get your picture taken with it, and win a prize. More information about the Restaurant Festival is on the WC Dish site.

UPDATE: I had a great time at the Restaurant Festival. I gave tattoos from 12-3, and Toren gave tattoos from 3-6. When I came back, he had developed a new overhand grip on the gun, and was giving tattoos better than I was. And his jokes were funnier! Bastard. You can see him keeping the crowd spellbound below: (click the photos to see them on Flickr)