I love spiders. I do. My kids can tell you: This Newbee Knitter will NOT kill any spider, unless in an extreme situation … like there is hairy-scary arachnid dangerously close to a baby, or on the ceiling perched directly over my pillow.
Why? Because spiders are our friends. Spiders eat the REALLY annoying bugs like roaches, mosquitoes and flies. And by eating pestilence-carrying critters, spiders actually help curtail disease spread. They say.
More important than all of this: Who doesn’t love your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man?
Say what you want about 8-legged crawlers, the webslinger is right: Spider silk is a mean substance. Beautiful, strong, resilient. So really, is it ANY surprise that this mystery thread should find it’s way into yarn for textiles? Stella McCartney doesn't seem surprised. Here’s proof.
CRAAAAZY, right? Now the “spider silk” we’re talking about for fabric and potentially yarn isn’t actually authentic spider. (Spiders are, after all, hard to tame.) But decades of research has led to the creation and early fabrication of synthetic spider silk, which has enjoyed a proof-of-concept hat release last in 2017. To the tune of around $200 per hat when they first came out.
Speaking as someone who knits with samoyed dog hair, once my LYS devotes a section to spider-blend, I’ll be first in line to knit up a “spider-silk” blended shawl. And I will sling it over my shoulders with pride.