Fly tying success is akin to fishing success, you’re happy to bore tears out of your fishing buddies, describing the instant of clarity when goat nostril was the perfect tailing fiber for your pre-menopausal emergent mayfly adult.

So long as you’re buying the beer they’ll feign interest…

What’s never described is the 750 refusals you got earlier, how you couldn’t buy a fish with your variant – and the really big SOB they’re congratulating you on was foul hooked in the dorsal with an Adam’s.

Fly tying is the same way.

I keep encouraging you to buy bulk, cut out the middleman, and go offshore … but that really nice out-of-production yarn I found that you wanted – may have been the Lemonade, and while you’re piling onto eBay to score some, I’m sleeping with lemons.

Another “factory direct” shipment from Turkey, minimum order is 10 skeins, and that mildly interesting navy blue mohair wrapped with a thin strand of silver tinsel?

… that’s dark Olive.

Mutt yarns are always a “home run” swing, there’s no bunting or swinging for percentage – it’s either what you wanted or Jimi Hendrix lit it on fire at Fillmore West.

It’s a head scratcher, chenille on one side and a bottle brush on the other?

I may have found the World’s Most Awesome Pipe Cleaner. Dip it in bourbon and watch the tar and dried spit melt from your stem…

I’ll wind it around a couple of hook shanks to check the effect, but I’ll not hold my breath.

The knitting cabal at the nearby church keeps showering me with stale sugar cookies everytime I produce a bag of colorful rejects – in between complaining about their kids I’m sure they’ve seen fit to put me in the good graces of the Man.

I see it as cheap insurance.