Close-up of a simple black outline bow tattoo on the inside of a wrist, with a hand and painted nails resting in front of a sequined fabric.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Outlined bow tattoo on the wrist

Other · Black and grey · Photo

A black outline of a bow with loops and short trailing ends sits on the inner wrist of a hand held near the camera. The linework is bold and solid with no shading, and the ink is black with no colour. The shallow focus leaves the hand and nails in the foreground softly blurred against a silver sequined background.

Other Bow Ribbon Outline Wrist Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ada Pringle had been tying the same bow for forty years, and she could do it blindfold over the cutting table with the wireless on, but the lad from the carnival committee wanted it drawn first. "Draw it on the back of the order form," she told him, "then I'll know you mean it."

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He drew a loop, then another, and she took the biro off him and drew the trailing ends herself, two short tails that swung the way ribbon does when a door opens somewhere behind you. Her hand was steady. It had been steady since 1979, when she made the sash for the Saltcombe Rose Queen and the girl cried because it wouldn't sit straight, and Ada unpicked it four times before it did.

The order came to forty yards of black satin, three spools of silver edging for the sequin trim, and a bow the size of a dinner plate for the front of the float. The committee wanted it outlined in black, bold, so it would read from the pier. Ada cut the satin herself on the big shears that were older than the shop's lease. She stitched the loops by lamplight after the chippy below had pulled its shutters down, and the smell of vinegar came up through the floorboards like company.

On carnival morning the float went past the pier with the bow riding high on the bunting, and the children ran alongside shouting. Nobody looked at the stitching. Ada watched from the upstairs window with her tea going cold, and when the lad climbed back up to thank her, he asked how she'd got the outline so even.

"One line," she said. "You don't lift the pen till the bow's finished."