Lots of Spiders
Does it seem like there are lots of spiders these days? Many more than usual? Don’t get me wrong, I like spiders, but it seems like a bumper year for them.
More Spiders Than Usual?
October seems like a good time for this post with Halloween coming up and all.
I walk out on my deck to take photos for the blog and there seems to be quite a few webs that my face runs into. Then I’ll be doing my weekly housecleaning duties and every other corner of the house seems to have a small web with a spider collecting bugs. Or, out on a bicycle ride, I see massive numbers of spider webs with a ton of bugs caught up in them.
I do like spiders since the more creepy crawlies in webs, the less bugs there are. I’m thinking that like cicadas, perhaps there is a cyclical population growth for spiders and this is the peak of the cycle. I have never seen quite these numbers before.
Is it regional? Did we just have a big influx of bugs hatching this year and so the population of web-makers could thrive more than usual?
I won’t grow too concerned until we start to see livestock go missing and barns filled with dense webs.
Current Knitting
I was able to finish my latest Tipsy Tiles Scarflet and it’s really quite beautiful (if I do say so myself).
If you look closely, you’ll see the ends of the scarflet don’t exactly match. I ran out of yarn just shy of finishing the second scarflet, so I modified it a bit. Here are both of the scarflets that I made.
Both of these were made from the same cake of yarn, and I couldn’t be more pleased with both the pattern and the result.
I’ve also noted a plethora of spiders in and around our condo in Eugene, Ore. Hmm. Coincidence?
Your scarflets are things of beauty, Joe, and you are quite handsomely dapper wearing them.
Spiders ARE in the collective consciousness today! Here is a segment from Frank Bruni’s NY Times newsletter (whose writing and views I admire greatly) this morning:
“Mary and I take turns. When we walk our dogs along our neighborhood’s woodland trails in the morning, I lead for a while, then she does, so that neither of us has to breach all the invisible spider webs, which, depending on their altitude, stick to our chests or shoulders or necks or even faces. If the web is high enough and I’m talking animatedly enough and I cross it midsentence, a strand sometimes slips between my lips. With a creepy-crawler in tow? I spit hard, I swallow harder, I pray. Thus far, I’ve felt nothing making a new home in my throat.”
Just yesterday I was on the phone with my 88-89 year old parents, and they got into a side conversation about whether the spider they were looking at was the same spider that they had been looking at the day before, but had put out or whether it was a different spider! Definitely in the air these days. I love spiders also because they are spinners.