Thought those of you that are way more experienced would enjoy the trials of a newbie...
I decided last night, and I admit, it probably was too late to be doing so... but I decided to haul everything out and tie one on... in retrospect, possibly the Amaretto would have been a better choice :) I decided rather than go for something new, I should back up one in the book and do another Gold-Ribbed Hare's Ear. As I type that sentence I feel compelled to admit that 1) I have no gold tinsel... I have some coming from an eBay seller though.. does that count? oh and also 2) I don't have a hare's mask. I figured if all I need is a little 'something' for the tail, I can put a bit of Elk hair in there, and is the fish gonna really know? So does this become a "Gold-Ribbed Elk's Hair" then? So, I get the white thread on there, and the new bobbin is annoying me still. My old one is metal and this one is ceramic. Anyway... wind back to the bend, get some hair, even it up, and tie it off... looks good! Then I pull out some gold floss my wife got me in the needlecraft section of Wal*Mart. I looked at it and realized it was way too thick, so I pulled out a section with about half the threads in it, and tied it in, put a weighted clip on it, and hung it off the back of the vise. I got out some light brown dubbing and decided to try a loop instead of the normal way I was taught. I didn't care for how it looked before winding it on, but then realized I'd spun the loop so was basically out of luck at that point, so I just wound it extra and eventually it looked ok as well. I tied that off, and left it hanging, while getting the bobbin out of the way, with the bobbin still annoying me. I started winding the floss forward and realized that I still had too much, so had to back that off, and cut about half more out to give me I think it was 2 threads. That looked good then, and got it tied off. I decided the bobbin had to be loosened up or thrown away, so I took the weighted clip I had on the floss and clipped it onto the thread to let it hang, pulled the spool out of the bobbin and horked the arms of the bobbin until it felt smoother... geez.... Let's see... cut a small piece of turkey feather to use as the wing case, and got it tied in, trimmed, and set. I added more dubbing, this time forgoing the loop idea, and wound up the thorax, and got that all tied off... whew... down to that piece of turkey quill and only one bobbin finally. I got the quill pulled over and tied very nicely, pulled tight, tied off and trimmed, then wound a bunch of thread for the head. All-in-all the dimensions didn't come out too badly. I remember when I first started I would end up without room for the head... Got out the whip finisher and just totally spaced how to use it.... a couple false starts, and about 30 loops slipped off the head exposing the tail end of the turkey quill... recovered that and two tries later did it again! Finally put a couple half-hitches on there by hand and then spent some time figuring out how to use the whip finisher... yowzer... I'm reasonably pleased with the end-product, but the steps I followed probably aren't in the book! I suppose next time I'll remember the errors this time... at least some of them... :) -Dave
