If you work with fibre (and I am thinking here of fishermen, weavers, farmers, wonder-if-I-could-knit-with-that knitters) you likely have a piece of fibre in your hand. I have: came about from knitting with rope, I suspect. It’s been in there for ages, months, possibly a year or two now. I can’t see it. But I can feel it. It’s in my palm, under the forefinger on my right hand and when it makes its presence known I tend to stare at that part of my hand in a bit of wonder, a bit of amazement. It doesn’t hurt, it just suddenly sort of pricks me – on the inside.
Maybe it’s an urban myth, that story of the lady sitting on a sewing needle as a child and fifty years later have it exit from her neck, but I do tend to think of it and hope this ‘foreign object’ under my skin takes the most direct route and exits out my lifeline.
(It has just occurred to me that more than thirty years ago, on this very day, I was strongly suggesting with incredible pushes that another object leave my body and was rewarded with my first darling baby.)