I was walking around the city the other day when I saw a woman with the loveliest earrings buying a newspaper. The splash of lacy silver had caught my eye, and I stopped in my tracks and shamelessly shuffled over to her side to take a closer look at them. They looked like those beautiful spider webs that you sometimes see while hiking through the mountains. And in the middle was a black spider. The spider surprised me, you know, the same way that finding a roach in an unexpected hiding place would surprise me...I must have thought it was a real spider for a split second, because I gasped. She must have heard it and noticed that I had been staring, because she turned to face me, pointed to her earrings, and said, "Martha Stewart."
Huh?!? Before I could ask her to elaborate, she was already out of my sight, having rejoined the hoard of people out and about during their lunch breaks. But I made up my mind then and there that I, too, would have earrings like that. I went home and googled "Martha Stewart spiderweb earrings," and got nothing more than a bunch of eBay auctions back as results. Maybe my mind was playing tricks on me, because the pictures in those auctions didn't exactly match up to the earrings that I thought I saw. I thought the earrings were more delicate than bold, if that makes any sense at all. So I decided to try making a pair for myself.
Here are my spider webs, complete with a cotton embroidery-floss spider. At first, I thought I would wrap some wire a la loose God's Eye style to make a spider web. But then, while looking for Halloween decoration ideas, I stumbled across this very nice crochet spider web table topper pattern (so cute! Did you see the candy cauldron that goes with it?). I put two and two together, and decided to crochet wire to make the spider webs. Instead of the yarn suggested, I used thin (32 gauge) non-tarnish silver wire, and a US size 9 (1.25 mm) crochet hook to make the web. I loosely followed the table topper pattern for a few rounds to make the web for the earrings. (As an aside...man is it hard to crochet with wire this thin! And I thought crocheting thread required concentration...). And for the spider, I pulled out four strands from a piece of black embroidery floss (usually made of 6 strands), and just double knotted the floss directly onto the web. I trimmed the ends down, and voila! 8 legged spiders.
I attached the spider webs to fish hook bases, and I had my very own pair of earrings. I put them on immediately, and couldn't wipe the smile off my face for the rest of the day (heh, doesn't take much, does it?)
I made a couple more to give to a few friends as what I like to call 'happy' gifts. For no special reason...just because. It makes me happy. And I hope it makes them happy, too.
Wow! Those are amazing.
Posted by: Aimee | October 06, 2006 at 01:43 AM
LOVE them! And they are cuter in person!! (Thanks, again!)
Thanks for explaining how to make them. I'm thinking of making a necklace (maybe) for Spenser! (put the spider web on a piece of black cording or something) We'll see ...
Posted by: lera | October 06, 2006 at 11:19 AM
these are so much nicer than any bought ones i've seen! great work
Posted by: rach | November 01, 2008 at 03:08 AM