Charlotte's Web

I actually met Charlotte yesterday.  She was a beautiful velvet black with quite distinctive markings on her back.  She wasn't your ordinary garden spider.  

I found her under a brick I moved.  I found her quite disturbing.

I slowly moved the brick and Charlotte to the grass area and encouraged her off the brick.  My camera was not to hand.  Normally, it is the erratic spiders I can't deal with but this one, although slow moving and beautiful seemed a little menacing.

My garden is full of my blipped spider.  Usually they move so fast it's too hard to photograph but there were three basking in the sunshine.  One of them was drumming its palpi at me when I got too close.  It raised one like a fist - I watched it through the lens - then the other & then they would both hammer the air in anger.  I have to admit to fear in case it jumped on the camera.  I backed off and tried this more amenable one.

I can only get so close to a spider!