Black and grey spider web tattoo and small script lettering on a woman's hip and midriff, with a floral sleeve tattoo on her upper arm.

Spider web and script tattoos on a midriff

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A close crop of a woman's bare midriff and hip, with her hand resting at the waistband of low-rise denim. A black spider web sits on the hip, with a line of script lettering below it on the lower abdomen, and further tattoos are partly visible on the upper arm and lower back. The linework is solid and the shading is grey and black, with soft natural light and a blurred warm background.

Upper arm Forearm Other Spider web Script Rose Flame

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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

Sit closer and mind the fire, for this is the tale of the Widow Anselm and the pass above Kerrow, where the wind comes through like a dog with a grudge.

Keep reading

Every autumn the carters came up the goat track with salt and wool, and every autumn the fog rolled off the tops and swallowed them whole. Nobody could see the road. Nobody could see their own boots. So the widow, who had spun more thread than any woman in three valleys, strung a web across the gap between the two black rocks, one strand for every year her husband had been dead. It took her all summer, and her fingers went the colour of old iron.

When the fog came, the carters walked into the web and felt it give. They stood still, then followed the thread that tugged gently toward the far side. Forty-one years of strands, and not one cart lost. The widow sat in her doorway with a cup of barley tea and never once went out to meet them.

Then in the spring of the great thaw a boy named Tobin Gorse came up alone with a mule and no sense. He cut the web with his knife because he wanted to see what she was hiding in it. That night in the fog he heard a soft voice calling his name from the wrong direction, and he did not come home. The next morning the widow found a small brass bell tangled in the broken strands. She hung it from the nearest rock, and to this day the carters say it rings on foggy afternoons, always from the wrong direction, and that a boy with a knife is still walking them home.