MAKE: Spooky Halloween Spider Web

This is a simple children’s finger knitting project for Halloween...

Time to get spooky crafting with the kids!

My 6 year old is almost able to concentrate long enough to learn to knit, but in the meantime she has quickly got to grips with finger knitting and my 4 year old daughter can pretty much manage making a pompom now. I have put the two together to make a fun Halloween decoration, which is great to hang from a ceiling or across a doorway.

You will need:

Oddments of wool in at least 3 colours (we have used white, yellow and red)

cardboard (cereal box is perfect)

2 eyes and fangs cut from white paper/card

Scissors, pencil and compass (or something round to draw your pompom circles from)

Finger knitting is very straight forward and this project is great for using up old oddments of wool.

Finger knitting

1. Tie a loop in one end of a small ball of wool, we have used Double Knitting weight for our webs and we have used white here as we are representing a cob web, but if your kids are a little less literal you can make them in any shade.

2.  Put the loop over your finger, wind wool once around your finger just above the first loop and then pull the first loop over the second.  Repeat this process until you have a knitted ribbon of finger knitting about 1 metre long (or until they get bored!). You will need  1 x 1m length of finger knitting and 6 shorter lengths of about 50 cm each.

Remember you should only have 1 loop on your finger when you are not half way through a stitch!

3.  To cast off, cut the wool (leaving a length to work with), thread this through the last stitch and pull tight. You are now ready to make your web.

4.  Lay your 6 short lengths of finger knitting on a table with the centres crossing to make a star shape.  Tie these 6 pieces together with the longer ribbon and arrange the long piece in a circular spiral growing out from the centre of the star, every time you cross one of the prongs tie the long spiralling length to it using a single knot.

5.  When you reach the end of your spiral shape simply tie the ribbon to the closest start prong and you are ready to hang your web in a window or against a wall.
 

Whilst my elder daughter was making the web I had set my youngest off making a pompom in the normal way:

1.  Cut 2 donut shapes the same size from a cereal box and winding wool through the middle until no cardboard shows and you can’t fit the wool through the hole anymore. I find it much easier to give her very short lengths of wool (a metre or so) wound into little balls or she gets it all in knots and we all end up getting cross!

2. When your pompom is fully covered, take a sharp pair of scissors and cut through all the loops around the edge of the donut.

3. Once they are all cut tie wrap a piece of wool all the way around the cut wool threads through the middle of the 2 cardboard circles and tie tightly. At this point take 4 pieces of wool at least twice as long as your pompom and tie them around the same point so that there are 8 equal pieces of wool hanging out of the pompom to create the spiders legs.

4. Cut through the cardboard and the wool should spring into a ball shape.

5. Give it a little neaten up with sharp scissors.

6. Add googly eyes and fangs made from small triangles of white card or whatever other decorations you like.

7. Hang from the spider web and stand back to admire your handy work!