  Spiders are beautiful. I was just out in the yard where a small golden one with a striped round abdomen has seen fit to construct a web restricting access to the garage door. I am quite certain that it wasn't there this afternoon, and as I knelt to examine the precious workmanship I noticed that he was indeed putting the final touches on the web just then. It appears that the outbound rays come first, with a thick reinforced knot at the focus for strength. Then the spider circles wide and inward to create the rungs. He either ate or otherwise destroyed the white ball of webbing in the center to create a little hole in the final web in which to sit, a finger on each of the outbound rays awaiting prey in much the manner of a shopkeeper with a bell on the door.
His reflexes test out to be quite honed as well: with just a gentle puff of air I could get him to face in any direction, and occasionally run over to an edge to see what was going on. I got to see him catch a mosquito. They really do roll their catch as they wrap it, just like Shelob in The Two Towers movie. Keep in mind though that the hadith about being kind to spiders is nothing but a common and baseless desi myth (though as always, allah hu alim). 
