Madonna and the Yarnwinder

Sometimes I find knitting and spinning tools in unexpected places, like great art work.

I'm reading the book The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World's Largest Unsolved Art Theft about the theft of numerous works from the Gardner Museum in Boston. At one point the author mentions another art theft from another museum, a Leonardo da Vinci work called Madonna and the Yarnwinder. Madonna and the Yarnwinder? Yarnwinder? So I look at the painting. Jesus is holding a niddy noddy!

"Behold! Symbolism!"