Colour tattoo on an arm of a ball of teal and grey yarn crossed with two knitting needles, above and below the words KNIT FAST DIE WARM in traditional-style lettering.

Yarn ball with knitting needles and lettering

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A ball of blue, teal and grey yarn sits at the centre, with its strands wrapping across the form, and two knitting needles crossing behind it. The phrase KNIT FAST and DIE WARM is set in black outlined lettering above and below the design. Bold black outlines and flat colour fills dominate, with a soft red wash behind the yarn ball.

Traditional Lettering Forearm Yarn Knitting needle Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

At half past eleven the number 4 had gone and taken the shelter's only light with it, so Dot and I sat in the dark while the rain came sideways off the Headrow. She had a ball of wool in her lap the colour of a February sea, and two needles going like sewing machines. 'You'll catch your death sat there,' she said, without looking up. 'Knit fast or die warm. That's what my father used to say.'

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I told her that didn't make sense. She said it made perfect sense if you'd grown up in a Yorkshire terrace with a coal fire that went out at ten. Her father had worked nights at the mill and came home to find the wool he'd been promised had never arrived, so he taught her to knit from the scraps off the bobbins. Every jumper she made came out lumpy and wide in the shoulders, and warm enough to stand a man up in the snow.

A taxi pulled in, its driver wound his window down, looked at the two of us, and drove off again. Dot laughed until she coughed. 'Nobody ever stops for the knitters,' she said, and held up the sleeve she'd been working. One cuff was finished and the other still open, a grey thread hanging loose from its edge. 'Give us your hands.'

I held out my palms, and she wound the loose yarn around my wrists twice, pulled it snug and bit the end off with her teeth. 'There. Now you can't go anywhere without me.' The bus came round the corner with its lights on, and for the first time all night I was glad to be pulled into the warm.