Pencil sketch of a compass rose inside a rope-edged circle decorated with dots, with a feather hanging from a chain below, shown as a tattoo design on paper.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Compass rose and feather design sketch

Dotwork · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing on paper shows an eight-point compass rose set inside a circle with a twisted rope border and a pattern of dots. A feather hangs from a chain or cord below the lower point of the compass. The work is in black and grey with shaded areas on the feather and fine stippled marks within the circle, and the sketch fills most of the frame against a plain background.

Dotwork Geometric Compass Compass rose Feather Rope Dot Chain Star

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Walter, The compass stopped spinning the night of the Harvest Ball at the Marine Pavilion, and I have been wondering ever since whether that was an omen or only the floor being uneven. Mrs Pryce, who runs the cloakroom, swore the needle pointed straight at the bandstand for the whole of the last waltz, and she has never once been wrong about anything, so I am inclined to believe her.

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The feather is a grey goose quill, though it was yours first. You tied it to the chain the morning you sailed and said a feather never falls straight down in a draught, so it would always find its way back to whoever held the other end. I have kept it on my dresser, and the cat has taken a fancy to it, so I have had to move it twice.

I have been up late with the star chart you left in the drawer, joining the dots the way you showed me, starting from the bright one near the rope and working outwards. The pattern makes a small fish with a crooked tail. Mr Doyle from the bakery says that is nonsense and that stars are not meant to look like anything, but I think you would have laughed at him.

Tomorrow the band plays the last waltz at eleven, and I shall leave the side doors open and the feather pinned to the piano lid. If the wind is in the west, it will find its own way out to you. Yours in every direction, Nell.