Colour tattoo of a pink smiling yarn ball with a green bow and a blue yarn ball with knitting needles on the inner wrist, in a cartoon style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Smiling yarn balls and knitting needles on a wrist

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

Two cartoon yarn balls sit side by side on the inner wrist. The pink ball has a smiling face and green bow and is outlined in a red loop of yarn, while the blue ball is shaded with striped lines and joined by a blue strand to a pair of knitting needles with a red-orange accent. The linework is clean and the palette is mainly pink, blue and green on pale skin, with a plain background.

Forearm Yarn Knitting needle Smiley face Bow

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The needles were the last to be told, which is how it always goes in a house with a knitting basket. Nan had been making a cardigan for the vicar's grandson since Easter, and my job was to hold the stitches while she counted under her breath. Mabel, the pink ball, kept her green bow pert and her smile wide the whole time. Bluebell, the striped one, lay at the bottom of the basket with her lines gone grey from fluff and didn't say a word to anybody.

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The strand between them was Nan's doing. She tied the end of Bluebell to my shaft so she could find her when the cat got at things, and that was that. Mabel tugged her red loop around her own middle whenever Nan turned her back, pretending it was a hug. Bluebell pretended not to notice. For a month the three of us went to the sofa and back, and the cardigan grew one row at a time, and I began to think the knitting was the easy part.

On the last Sunday in August Nan dropped the whole basket. Balls rolled under the dresser, the strand pulled taut and then snapped clean through, and Bluebell slid across the lino to the skirting board with her face to the wall. I couldn't reach her. Nan went down on her knees with a sigh, muttered something about cats, and picked up Mabel first, beaming at the pair of us as if nothing had happened.

She knotted the strand back together that evening, and the join still shows if you look for it. Bluebell has never quite forgiven the knot. Mabel says it gives her character. The cardigan was finished the week the vicar's grandson outgrew the sleeves, and Nan says the two of them only ever got along when they were tied together, which is more or less how I feel about the pair of them.