Everything about this pattern, before you pay for it
Most pattern listings tell you after. Here is the whole spec.
| What it is | A written crochet pattern, delivered as a PDF. The file itself is titled The Little Spider Hero and His Web. |
| What you make | A small red-and-blue hero — a round red head and body in one piece, blue from the waist down, two arms with red hands, two legs with pointed red feet, and two white eyes edged in black — hanging on a long chain thread from a round crocheted web. |
| Finished size | About 7 cm (2¾ in) tall. The web is about 10 cm (4 in) across, and the thread about 25 cm (10 in) — as long as you like. |
| How long it takes | About 2 hours. |
| Hook | 2.5 mm — the pattern’s recommendation for this yarn. |
| Yarn | 4-ply milk cotton, about a US sport weight — the pattern’s recommendation — in red, blue, white and black. Use the same weight for the red and the blue: the body changes colour mid-round. |
| Yarn needed | About 13 g (35 yd) of red, 5 g (15 yd) of blue, 6 g (15 yd) of white and 1 g (5 yd) of black — about 25 g (70 yd) in all. |
| Skill level | Confident beginner, which is what the pattern itself says: joined rounds, invisible decreases, one small oval, and a chain-space web. |
| Techniques used | Starting with a magic ring · joined rounds, closing each one where it began · chain, slip stitch, single crochet and double crochet · the single crochet increase and the invisible decrease · three single crochets into one stitch · starting a piece on a chain and working back along both sides of it · working a round into the back loops only · turning mid-piece and working flat across part of a round · changing colour in the last stitch of a round · working into a chain space rather than into a stitch · stuffing a piece before it closes · closing a round opening with a yarn needle · sewing parts on and gluing small pieces down · weaving in ends |
| Worked in | Joined rounds, each closed with a slip stitch, with the yarn-under single crochet — explained in the pattern, with what changes if you crochet the usual way. The starting chain never counts as a stitch, except on the web, where the chains at the start of each round stand in for its first double crochet, and the line says so. The decreases are invisible. |
| The head and body | One piece, from the crown down, with no break in the yarn but the colour change. Out to 30 in five rounds, five plain, down to 9 at the neck by round 14, then out again to 24 for the body. Red to round 20; the blue is picked up in round 20’s last stitch so the join doesn’t show. The head is stuffed at round 13, before the neck closes, the body at round 23, and round 24 is drawn shut into a point. |
| The arms and legs | Each arm is a small tube, red at the hand and blue from round 4, flattened at the tip in its last two rounds. Each leg starts on a chain as a small oval, with a back-loop round that leaves a ridge round the edge of the foot; red to round 4, then blue. At round 7 the two legs are worked differently, so both pointed feet face forward once sewn on. |
| The face | Two crocheted eyes — each a small oval started on five chains, white, with a round of black — glued on, and a black line sewn across the face between them in a single ply of the yarn. |
| The web and thread | Five rounds from a ring of 14 double crochets: seven spokes, with chain arches between them growing from three chains to nine. You start it with a one-metre tail, and the thread is chained from that tail — 60 chains, or until the tail runs out. He is glued onto the thread at his side, between an arm and a leg. |
| Number of pieces | Eight: the head and body, two arms, two legs, two eyes, and the web with its thread. |
| Count checkpoints | Two: 30 at the end of round 10, the widest the head gets, and 24 at the end of round 21, the first blue round. |
| Sewing and glue | The arms and legs are sewn on with their own long tails. The eyes and the thread are glued with hot-melt glue — a glue gun, or a stick melted with a lighter, and the pattern says how. |
| Stuffing | The head and body, firmly — about 5 g. |
| Also needed | Hot-melt glue, about 5 g of fiberfill, two stitch markers, a yarn needle and scissors. |
| Pages | 24 |
| Printing | The instructions are real text, not pictures of text — so you can search them, copy them, enlarge them, or have them read aloud. |
| Terminology | US crochet terms |
| Language | English |
| Left-handed | Written for you too. Work it exactly as written: every round has the same stitches and the same count, and your figure comes out a mirror image of the photos. The back loop is still the loop further from you, and the two legs differ only in which one turns first — make one of each, in either order. |
| Delivery | Download link on the confirmation page and in your email, straight away. |
Real crochet, captured while it was being made
You have learned to zoom in on a listing photo looking for stitches that don’t join up. You should — the shops selling patterns behind pictures that were never crocheted are real, and there are a lot of them.
So here is the unglamorous version: the four limbs, red at the tip and blue above, the last one still on the hook; the two eyes in an open hand; the web laid flat. Every one of these was captured while the piece was actually being made.
The web laid flat is the one to look at. Five rounds, seven spokes, and the arches between them two chains longer every round.
Nothing on this page is an AI-generated figure.
Counted twice
My grandmother taught me on her porch, and she said the same thing every time I tangled the yarn: slow down, count twice, rip it out if it’s wrong — there’s no shame in starting over.
So every pattern in this shop gets counted twice. Once when it’s written. Then again, before it goes on sale: every round is re-added, stitch by stitch, and checked against the round before it.
That’s the whole thing. It’s not clever. It is just the step almost nobody takes, because until a pattern is written down properly you can’t take it — and because nobody was ever asked to show their working.
I’m asking to show mine.
The worst thing a pattern does is not be difficult. It is to be wrong early, so that you find out rounds later and spend the next twenty minutes wondering whether it was you.
On this one, the likeliest place for that is the bottom of the body. Rounds 20 and 21 are plain rounds of 24 — the last of the red and the first of the blue — and the hand settles into them. Round 22 starts the three rounds that close the body to a point. Work it plain like the two before it, and the only sign before the last round refuses to close is a body that tapers unevenly. So round 21 ends on a checkpoint, the last simple count before the decreases: 24, one blue stitch on every red one.
Counted twice means you can tell. No more counting the same round for the third time, writing it out on paper to make it add up, and still not knowing whether it’s you or the pattern. The count in the pattern is right. If yours doesn’t match it, the slip is in the round you just made — undo that one round and carry on.
You probably have one project in a bag somewhere, stopped at a round you can still name. Often it stopped on a count that wouldn’t come out. Every count in this one comes out, which leaves you the part you came for: finishing it, and handing it to someone without an apology.
Here is a real page of it
A pattern that was never crocheted can show you a photograph. It cannot show you a page.
That box is the end of round 21, the first blue round: 24 stitches, one in each stitch of round 20. It is the round to be sure of — the three after it all decrease, and an error here has nowhere to go but into the closing point. This is page 16 of the 24 you get, and it is the same page you will be reading with a hook in your hand.
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