I haven’t had much time recently on one of my WIPs but I managed to start again on it! That was fun and I think it’s start to develop something vaguely resembling a story.
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I’ve decided on my next big beading project. Going to make a beaded candy sack for halloween with orange, green, and purple stripes and black straps. Initially was worried the lightest shade in the tritone mixes I’ve been using might not fit with halloween for the green and purple stripes and thought about aadding black in a 1 black for 3 colored mix and tried to find monochrome beads in suitable colors, but between the monochrome beads I found being an extra dollar per 500 count bag and requiring shipping fees that aren’t waived with Walmart Plus and effectively make the monochrome beads twice the price of the tritone mixes, and the logistics of mixing and storing a batch of 2000 beads when I have plenty of leftovers from the last project where I mixed beads, I’ve decided to stick to the pure tritone blends and screw it if the green and purple stripes are a bit too bright for Halloween.
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I saw a massive and beautiful orb weaver on the porch! She was sitting in the center of her web as I came outside, but she heard me approaching and ran for the topmost anchor line, getting out of the way and bracing for impact.
Of course, that impact never happened, so she can enjoy some relief.
There was one square sector of the web that was a dense, frazzled mess of web lines. No prey was caught there; it seems she just wanted that part of the web to look like that. Otherwise, the rest of the web is pretty uniform.
I wonder if she’s keeping it up for the day shift, or if she’s just set it up this evening, and plans to wait for catches overnight instead. That’s a particularly popular spot for orb weavers throughout the years, and they usually figure out that it’s best to leave it up overnight, and pack up during the day.
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I decided to start tracking the orb weaver’s web on an hourly basis. She’s sleeping right now, and it seems like her web from yesterday is partially disassembled.
I’m hoping to be outside to see her when she starts rebuilding. 
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Pictures?
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Image description: A large orb weaver of dark shades and orange highlights. Her short legs are tucked close, with a body length of about 10 millimeters. Sunlight shines down, creating a soft halo outline of the body, and highlighting web strands in glittering white.
Image description: A wide view of the orb weaver’s web. Three anchor lines create a Y shape, and the web is woven as an inverted triangle. The web is approximately 70 centimeters in diameter, and its highest point hangs 2 meters off the ground. The spider is not visible in this image. Radial sections vary between neatly-organized rectangles, chaotic criss-crosses, and square gaps. Some lines are too thin, and seem to be invisible. At a 7 o’clock angle, halfway between the center and outer edge, there is a small, tangled cluster of web lines. Prey catches are scattered across the surface of the web, but the tangled section appears to be empty.
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Weaver update! I managed to get some pics of her in the middle of her new web! Unfortunately I wasn’t able to watch her weave it; I was a bit busy with a software repair task lol.
Image description: An orb weaver, photographed from a respectful distance, so the fine details are unfortunately pixelated. The overall shape is like an oval, with a sunlit outline.
Image description: An wide photo of the new web, constructed by the orb weaver. It already has prey scattered within it. The inner core is not visible in sunlight, but the outer band shines with a complex arrangement of lines. This web is overall more orderly than the previous one, assembled from small rectangles. From a 1 o’clock to 2 o’clock angle, the web has a lot more chaotic gaps and crossing lines. At the 8 o’clock angle, about halfway between the center and outer edge, that same dense, tangled spot of web can be seen, just like the one in the previous web, which appears to be a kind of signature for this spider.
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Thanks to pulling an all nighter, I was able to confirm the direct deposit of my SSDI at 5AM and place my big grocery order for the month for same day delivery and pay all of my bills that I can pay right away before 6AM. In addition to my usuals, the grocery order includes most of the beads for my beaded candy sack(had to order one fewer bags of orange beads than I planned for, but by the time that becomes an issue, it should be close to next pay day. Also, splurged for ingredients to make deli wraps and discovered that I can actually get teas other than plain black or plain green in store brand, so since I needed to restock tea this month, I’ve swapped out name brand Earl Grey and peppermint herbal for store brand… if it goes well, I might need to invest in a larger tea chest as some flavors of the store brand only come in 40 count boxes and it’s a bit of a packing puzzle to fit 20 bags into each compartment of my existing chest(as a packet of tea is thicker at the bottom than the top, to fit 20 packets in one compartment, I have to alternate the packets rightside up and upside down, if they are all in the same orientation, the bottom side of the stack is too thick to fit)… Also taking a risk on some butterscotch and cinnamon hard candies I’ve never tried before as my usual lemon drops and assorted fruits are out of stock.
Also, in paying my bills, I’ve passed a thousand dollar milestone in paying down a loan and have reached the point each payment is mostly going towards principle instead of monstly to interest… Still a ways off from paying it off, but makes me feel like I’m actually getting somewhere with my debts.
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She must be learning. Great pictures and narrative.
You are a true scientist.
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My mother enjoyed English teas. She always had a guarded collection. I remember that her favorite was Earl Grey.
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The highest of compliments, thank you! 
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Okay so I was told there was a second orb weaver somewhere else in the yard, and while I was searching for that, I found a
HUGE FUNNEL WEAVER
This happened yesterday, but then cardio, shower, and coping with depression by playing Balatro happened, so I kinda sorta forgot to post this yesterday lol.
Image description: A large, night-black spider sits upon her thick, silk sheet throne. Her long legs reach outward like the fingers of bat wings, on either side of her 15-millimeter-long body.
My dad took this next photo, and his camera has much better zoom abilities. Just before this moment, he got a little too close, and the spider started raising her legs in a threat pose. She calmed down pretty quickly, though.
Image description: A picture of the spider from an elevated angle. Her eyes are barely visible against the color of her fur. Thick outcroppings of sensory hairs are visible on the silhouettes of her legs, all the better to hear you with, my dear. Two pedipalps are spread and curled downward, clearly showing the outline of her chelicerae. A gray stripe highlights the center, left, and right sides of her prosoma, like a triple-mohawk. A dark-gray heart mark forms a long streak, barely visible over the top of her opisthosoma. Dark-gray rings are evenly spaced around her legs and pedipalps. She is ready for the upcoming October season!
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I dreamed that one specific professor, who’s always been rather disparaging about my work, found my upcoming ECTOCOMP entry and had all sorts of sardonic comments about the placement of French verbs. This has convinced me to write my ECTOCOMP entry in English instead.
Well, that, and the fact that I don’t know French.
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Mais la voix me console et dit: «Garde tes songes:
Les sages n’en ont pas d’aussi beaux que les fous!»
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Here’s hoping the funnel weaver is much less dangerous than the similarly named Sydney funnel web… Also, I apparently don’t speak spider anatomy as I understood very little of that last description.
Also, I consider it one of the worst parts of my American upbringing that I was in my 30s before experiencing the joy of Earl Grey… though I still have about 2 weeksof old tea stock before opening the newly bought boxes of tea(sadly, the old stock would run out before my food stamps for October come in, that $35 order minimum for delivery orders discourages restocking as one goes, and I find it stressful when I know there’s something I need to buy or pay for, have the funds to pay for it right now, but have to wait while remembring not to spend that money on something else, a couple weeks of a grocery bag full of boxes of tea hanging from a hook on a cabinet door while I finish emptying my tea chest is the lesser inconvenience.
Also, between ordering and fulfillment, I’m down a second pack of orange beads, down two packs of purple, and with no black… if things go to plan, that should still let me get through making half of the sacks body, and I was planning on adding the black handles at the end regardless, and even if I have to push buying more beads for when I get paid in October, October has 5 Wednesdays this year, and while that sucks for November’s grocery budget, it means I have over a week between next payday and Halloween to finish my big Halloween crafting project.
Speaking of Halloween, in preparation for October, I recently mass download descriptive audio for The Simpsons and have separated out all of the Tree house of Horror episodes. My source for descriptive audio is missing a season in the 20s, but that still leaves me with 34 installments of one of my favorite personal traditions from childhood, many of which I’ve never seen as I kind of stopped bothering with television after going blind back in 2012 and my last binge of the Simpsons ended partway through something like Season 20 or 21… a full binge including the last decade or so is on my watch list, but I figure singling out the Halloween episodes since there are now more than enough to watch a different one every night of October would be a nice bit of nostalgia for the season… Plus, I recently learned there’s a Death Note parody among the ones I haven’t seen.
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Very excited for your project!
Statistically, it probably is. A lot of spiders are very hesitant to bite and even more hesitant to unleash venom. Attacking has a large cost involved, so a spider often wants a good trade. That said, spiders should still be given a respectful amount of personal space, just to be on the safe side! No reason to go unnecessarily poking and grabbing spiders!
- The chelicerae are a pair of thick digits, which hang over the mouth. Each carry a fang at the tip. Some spiders use their chelicerae for chewing.
- Pedipalps are the small, finger-like mini-legs, found on either side of the mouth’s chelicerae. They’re technically like a fifth pair of legs, and their shape can help identify what kind of reproductive organs a spider has.
- The prosoma is the forward body segment, where the eyes and legs connect.
- The opisthosoma is the rear body segment, where the spinnerets, heart, and lungs are found.
- A spider usually has a visible stripe or streak going over the top of the opisthosoma; this is called a “heart mark”. What you are seeing is literally the pumping heart of the spider, partially visible under the blurry surface of carapace material.
Orb weaver update! And I used my dad’s camera this time!
She can tell what direction I am, relative to her web, and I noticed she’s a lot more nervous when I’m standing in front of it, versus standing to either side of it. So I got a pic of her in the middle of her web, but I couldn’t get close enough because I would risk walking into some fibers. Meanwhile, I couldn’t get too close in front of her web, because that visibly terrifies her, so she starts running for fallback safety spots.
However, these pictures offer a bit more clarity!
Image description: The orb weaver is visible in higher resolution, now. This image offers a sideways view of her at the center of her new web. She is facing downward. Her body seems to be dark-grayish-brown, with orange stripes and rings, which catch the sunlight. The silhouette seems to roughly approximate a semicircle. Half of her legs are held forward, and the other half are held backward.
Image description: This photo offers more of a top-down view of the orb weaver, though after she has escaped to the top of her massive web out of panic. The shape of her two body segments are much more clear here. Her opisthosoma is about twice the size of her prosoma, and looks fairly spherical from this angle. Hints of dark rings seem to decorate her body, in contrast with the orange rings of her legs.
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Positive: I have discovered the amazing focus abilities of the Open Camera app, which allows me to take amazing photos of tiny spiders on my own phone!
Neutral: I have two drains to unclog today.
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Bug photography continues, and I got spooked by a praying mantis. If you’re wondering why the photo is a bit fuzzy, it’s because of the spook effect.
I’ve become very accustomed to photographing spiders and millipedes, which generally cannot perceive me visually. I just exist as something that produces motion and sound for them, and they’re all reliably seeing me as something like a part of their environment, and not a fellow creature.
A praying mantis can see me – in stereo, no less – and it’s armored and capable of flight.
This specimen was facing forward, right up until I started taking the actual photo, and then its head suddenly snapped to face the camera. I think it can see lidar from the phone’s rangefinder? Anyway, I would ask the mantis to maybe not do that in the future, please, because I am not used to being perceived, and fixing me in stereo is one more step along the target acquisition process.
EDIT: Apparently my phone doesn’t use lidar for rangefinding. I have no idea why the mantis looked at me in that moment in particular.
Image description: A pale, yellow-green praying mantis stands on the side of a wooden beam, claws held forward, but with its face rotated toward the camera, examining the viewer in return.
Anyway, the praying mantis is a wonderful creature, but I’ll admit I might strongly prefer to continue photographing millipedes and spiders, thanks.
Orb weaver news: She’s gone. 
I don’t know where she went. I didn’t see her in any of her fallback safety locations. She might have moved on, or gotten eaten by a lizard.
The large funnel weaver also was not in her home, though I did see a large webbed sack in her place, so she might be sleeping in that. I do know some spiders weave sleeping bags for themselves, though I’m not sure if this species does that, in particular.
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More wildlife updates! (Today has been an eventful day; sorry for so many posts)
I’ve now seen a chicken in real life, for the first time ever! My neighbor has chickens and apparently they got loose, but nobody knows how to corral them back, so uh. they’re just wandering the neighborhood now, with a rooster overseeing their safety.
The orb weaver is back! It just rained, so I think she felt the change in local pressure, packed up her silk, and hid away somewhere. Once the rain stopped, I went outside to see the chickens, and I saw her building her new web!
The funnel weaver is also back! I strongly suspect the bag I spotted before was for sleeping and/or waiting out the rain. She’s now in her usual spot!
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Step one is looking at you; step two is dancing. If they haven’t started dancing, you’re probably safe.
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