Black and grey Celtic knot tattoo with interlaced loops and a tall looped top, shaded on pale skin.

Celtic knot tattoo on skin

Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a Celtic knot tattoo built from interlaced looped strands, with a tall loop rising from a three-lobed base. The outlines are bold and dark, with soft grey shading inside the loops that gives the knot some depth. The design is centred on a plain, lightly textured skin background, and the surrounding skin tone is warm and slightly reddened.

Celtic knot Triquetra Knot Interlace Loop

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift had been out since Tuesday, so Ruth climbed the stairwell of Halden House with a coil of hemp over one shoulder and a bag of potatoes knocking against her knee. Twenty-two floors of concrete, smelling of bleach and somebody's fried onions. Her father had spliced that rope the summer he came home from the hospital, three strands laid into one and bent back on themselves until the end vanished into the lay. He used to say a good splice was one you could not find.

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On the landing of the nineteenth, the Adeyemi boy sat on the step with a pair of trainers tied together by their laces. "Won't hold," he said. He was nine and furious about it. Ruth set the potatoes down and knelt beside him. She showed him the trick her father used: make the first loop, pass the second through it, then take the third around both so no single strand could slip free without the others going with it.

He tried it three times. The first two came out lopsided, but on the third a tall loop stood up tight and clean above the base, the way her father's always had. The boy held it to the window as if it were a medal, and the light from the car park came through the loop and lay in a pale oval on the lino.

Ruth got up, knees cracking, and left him to it. Twenty-two floors was a long way with potatoes, but she found she did not mind the stairs. Below her the lift doors would be opening on an empty car, and she climbed on anyway, the rope still heavy on her shoulder and the pale oval of light trailing behind her up the stairs.