Tarantula

Tarantulas make up a group of large, mostly hairy-looking, spiders of a family with over a 1000 species and one of the most conspicuous crawlers is the orange-kneed tarantula. Running into one of these awe-inspiring arachnids will give most people a formidable fright, but tarantulas – like most spiders - will usually also prefer the option of flight over fight! So, if one day you happen to knock into your knitted spider in a dark corner of your house, just remember that it’s orange knees will be knocking from this eerie encounter as well!

For this 7 cm model (with 6 cm legs) 2 mm double pointed needles (UK 14, US 0) and Alpaca Drops (16) black and (22) light rust were used with plies of yarn added for volume. Toy filling was used to fill the spider and pipe cleaners to make legs and joints pliable. This tarantula is an easy and fast project, perfect for using up any left-over scraps of yarn you have lying around. It asks for some knitting flat, in the round and i-cords.

Creep it up! Viv