Black and grey fine line tattoo of a needle with a looping thread running down the inside of a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Needle and thread on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A single sewing needle sits across the forearm with a fine black thread looping from its eye and winding down towards the wrist. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, and the design is drawn in black ink on pale skin. The photograph is black and white, with the arm angled diagonally across the frame against denim shorts.

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The thread snapped again at the hem, so I have sewn the sail-cloth with the old needle, the bone one Father carved, because the bronze one has gone blunt on the ribs of the awning. Do not laugh. Forgive the ink. The lamp smokes whenever the wind comes off the Tiber.

Keep reading

The commission is for the Gallic shipwright who wants his mainsail ready before the grain fleet leaves. He paid in advance and then paid again to have every seam sewn twice, because he trusts nothing he cannot count. I counted for him. Four hundred and twelve stitches to the span, each one the length of my thumb, and the thread waxed three times so the salt would not fray it through. When I finished he ran his fingers down the seam the way a priest reads an entrail, and said nothing, which is the highest praise a man like that gives.

Here is the odd part. Last night I dreamed the thread had grown long enough to reach the harbour, and that I was pulling it out of the water hand over hand, and at the far end was the boy from the fuller's shop who went to Massilia and never wrote. I woke with the needle still clenched in my fist and a bead of blood on my wrist where the point had gone in.

Send word when the wind turns. I will keep the lamp lit and the wax warm, and I will not let the cloth go slack until you are home.

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