Three side-by-side photos of an illustrated tattoo of a woman with a blunt fringe and flowing hair on the upper arm, in soft brown and grey shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Woman with flowing hair on upper arm

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a woman with a blunt fringe and long, flowing hair, resting her chin on one hand while her bare shoulder turns towards the viewer. Fine, dense linework defines the hair, while soft grey shading models the face, hand and skin. Warm brown and ochre tones in the hair contrast with the muted greys of the skin, and the image shows three views of the same piece.

Upper arm Woman Portrait Hair Hand Shoulder

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer to the range, the lot of you, and mind the dog's tail. Hear me now. Last winter the snow shut the Carrow road for nine days, and Mrs Pell's girl came up our lane with a sack of wool on her back and not a word for anybody. Her name was Edie, and her hair had never once been cut, so it came down past her knees the colour of wet bracken.

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She had walked from the mill at Hebden because the farmer there had promised her a spinning wheel and a bed, and he had given her the wheel and the doorstep. All that night she sat by our fire with her chin in her palm, watching the flames the way a cat watches a window, while my mother combed the snarls from her hair with a bone comb. Nobody asked what she was waiting for. You don't ask that in January.

In the spring a letter came from the mill, addressed to nobody, which said only that the wheel was sold to pay the debts. Edie read it twice, folded it into the lining of her shawl, and went out to the ewes. She spun the sack of wool into yarn fine enough to pass through a wedding ring, knitted it into a shawl the colour of her own hair, and carried it to the market at Skipton, where she sold it for more than the farmer had ever paid her in a year.

The shawl is still in our chest. Look at the threads and you'll see they never quite match, one strand dark, one gold. That's where she stopped to think, I reckon, with her hand under her chin and the whole winter waiting. Now off to bed, all of you. The snow's not finished yet.