Colour tattoo of a chickadee perched on a red thread spool beside a needle and thimble, with red script initials below, on the lower leg.

Chickadee on a thread spool with script initials

Realism · Calf · Mixed · Photo

A realistic chickadee with blue-grey plumage and a black cap sits on a red thread spool, with a needle and thimble drawn at the sides. Fine red thread loops around the design and forms three looping script initials beneath the spool. The bird and spool are shaded with smooth gradients, while the thread and lettering use crisp, even linework against the skin.

Realism Lettering Calf Bird Needle Thread

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom, the last red spool is down to a single ring, so I have wound what remains onto the good wooden reel and sent it up with Mrs Hadley's boy, who says the north face is working again and the men will take the cage at six. Mind your fingers on the rope. Your father never once let a needle go through his thumb in thirty years, and I do not intend to start mending you from a distance.

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There was a chickadee on the pithead rail this morning, the black-capped sort Aunt Peg swore only came down from the moor when a heavy shift was coming. It sat there looking at me as if I owed it money. I told it the thread was all gone, and it hopped off along the rail and watched me anyway, cocking its head the way the foreman does before he docks a day's pay.

I have stitched your initials into the lining of the new muffler, the grey wool your sister dyed in the copper. I used your grandmother's thimble, the one with the dent in its crown. I pushed the needle through three times before my hand stopped shaking, and the red thread ran in loops across the cloth like something trying to find its way home.

When the bird came back at noon, a stray red strand was caught round its little blue foot. I thought, well, there is one more thing coming up out of the ground. Come home soon. The kettle is on, the muffler is warm, and the bird has been waiting on the rail since dawn.