The Spider

Is it because of Charlotte that I think she is female? Or is it because she weaves her web with such a delicate hand? Unseen in the sunlight, she appears like a fancy out there in the darkness, sitting alone in the center of her labyrinth every evening; an artist enthroned on her canvas of gossamer. Reaching from Oak tree to Annabelle, this intricate Rorschach of silk, woven in patterns more complex than a snowflake, seems quite impossible. How on earth does she do it? Night after night? I am humbled completely - I who was so chuffed at my newly acquired ability to knit from patterns that were hieroglyphic only months ago. From her diaphanous nighttime villa, has she studied me at the window, as I sat perched on my tuffet of hubris with knitting needles in hand? Has she perhaps stifled a lilting giggle at my myriad of deficiencies and the flimsy curiosities they produce? Or does she simply pity me kindly, secure in her knowledge that, try as I might, I can never hope to attain her eminent stratum of artistry with such meager human tools at my disposal.
Two hands? Only two?
She possesses eight, after all.


My favourite model wears a newly completed cabled scarf, one the spider watched me knit.
Wonderful yarn... Araucania Azapa in Lilac.