Click the tartan to view its entry in The Scottish Registers of Tartans which includes registration details, restrictions, and registrant information.
Unregistered tartans may link to one of the web's online design environments for similar information.
For any questions about reproduction of designs or weaving of these tartans, please contact the registrant directly or via this website.
Cobweb Night
“It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.”
~ Walt Whitman, A Noiseless Patient Spider, 1868
Creepy crawlies are out in full force this season!
This orange and black tartan captures October’s familiar colours in a suitably web-like weave: warm pumpkin oranges crossed with black against the deepening shadows of autumn nights.
Between the season's fading stems and moonlit branches, the garden’s eight-legged weavers are busy spinning their silver threads. Even this month’s name echoes the spider theme: October comes from the Latin octo, meaning eight, a reminder that October was originally the eighth month of the early Roman calendar.
Long before tartan looms hummed or human hands twisted wool, spiders were constructing intricate patterns of their own. The classic orb web, with its radiating spokes and spiralling threads, has an extraordinary geometric precision. Other species build silken funnels, tangled cobwebs or delicate sheets stretched across grass and low vegetation.
There is even a spider named for St. Andrew! Several Argiope spiders decorate the centre of their webs with conspicuous white zigzags of silk and sit with their long legs arranged in pairs, creating an X remarkably like the Saltire. One Australian species is consequently known as the St Andrew’s Cross spider, while its American relative, the black-and-yellow garden spider or “writing spider,” creates a similarly striking zigzag at the centre of its web.
Scotland, of course, has an even more famous spider story. According to legend, Robert the Bruce, discouraged after a series of defeats and sheltering in a cave, watched a spider repeatedly attempt to carry its thread across a gap. Again and again it failed; again and again it tried, until at last it succeeded. The spider’s persistence supposedly encouraged Bruce to renew his own efforts—giving rise to the familiar lesson, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
Perhaps that helps explain why spiders have accumulated so much folklore. Across centuries they have been associated with patience, persistence, good fortune and the spinning of fate itself. And in October, when webs suddenly seem to appear everywhere—outlined by morning dew, stretched between autumn plants or illuminated by low afternoon sunlight—they provide their own natural Hallowe’en decorations.
At this time of year many spiders are also reaching maturity and looking for mates, so there may be rather more eight-legged activity around the garden than usual.
And perhaps, depending on your locale, mind where you put your hands around those glossy black ones! 🧡 🖤 🧡 🎃 🎃 🎃 🕷️ 🕷️ 🕷️ 🕸️
October is a particularly noticeable time for spiders. Although spiders are present throughout the year, many common garden species reach maturity in late summer and autumn. By October, females of some orb-weaving species are at their largest and are producing the large webs that become so conspicuous around gardens, fields and woodland edges.
Spider webs are impressive pieces of natural engineering. In a typical orb web, strong radial threads extend outward from the center and provide the main support. These are connected by a spiral of capture silk designed to intercept flying insects. Spiders produce different types of silk for different purposes, including structural support, prey capture, wrapping prey, making egg sacs and producing the safety lines they use while moving around.
The construction of an orb web follows a surprisingly organized sequence. The spider first establishes anchor lines and a supporting framework, adds the radial spokes, and then lays down the spiral. The finished web is lightweight but able to withstand wind and the impact of insects. Vibrations passing through the silk also provide the spider with information about activity elsewhere in the web.
Webs become particularly easy to see in October because cooler nights frequently produce dew. Tiny droplets collect on the silk and reveal webs that would otherwise be nearly invisible. Low autumn sunlight can make the individual strands especially clear, which is why a garden may appear to be covered with webs on an October morning even though many of those spiders have been there for months.
Many orb-weavers also replace their webs regularly. A damaged or inefficient web may be taken down and reconstructed, and some species eat much of the old silk before building again, allowing its proteins to be reused. A large, apparently elaborate web can therefore be a surprisingly temporary structure.
Spiders may be associated with October because of Halloween, but there is a biological reason they seem especially abundant at this time of year. For many familiar garden spiders, autumn is simply the period when the adults—and their webs—are at their most conspicuous.
For more on cobweb season, click the spider and pumpkins!