I am getting things more organized after closing the office.
I had fly tying things in about five different boxes. That
made it fairly hard to find things as I was trying to get
back into the swing of tying.
My wife said that my tying stuff could be downstairs, but it
would have to be in "Sterlite" containers so that it could not
be spread all over creation. She did mention that it would
not be the cat that spread it all over the place.
I got a few of them and started going through the boxes. It
was quickly apparent that I was not a neat freak in how I
kept things on my desk and even less so when packing it
up. I took the drawers out of the containers and put them
on the bed in the room where all of this was stored.
I then started to go through each box and put the materials
in the drawers where I wanted them.
This way marabou could be in the same drawer, different
sizes of chenille in different drawers.
Boa and related yarns in three different drawers. Feathers of
various types in three different drawers. I found a real deal on
Christmas tinsel last year. So there are three drawers of tinsel,
one each of gold and silver. The other has the red, green, purple
and various other colors I have.
There are separate drawers for dry fly and wet fly dubbing.
The punch yarn takes most of another drawer.
To get back to the title of this ramble I have to tell you
about the thread mess that came as I went through each
box. This also came as I looked in the 24 compartment
boxes in the bag my wife gave me to store my excess flies
in. For some dumb reason, valid at the time, I had left
spools of thread in almost every compartment.
It almost seemed that each spool had to be used to tie
that fly and no other flies. I still can't remember why I
had them in the boxes like that. I did not remember, I
know the mind is the first thing to go, that I had even put
the thread in these. I saw a couple of spools as I was
pulling one of the boxes out to put some flies in. When I
looked I found several more spools in other compartments
in other boxes.
The other things I found as I went through some of the
others things were almost empty spools of thread. Only
half of the spool was covered on the last layer of thread
on the spool. I must have thought it sacrilegious to use the
last bit of thread off the spool. I will not tell you how many
of these there were, but you would need more than your
own fingers and toes to count them. I have cleared several
of these out in the past few weeks of tying.
The other thing I found was some thread I had forgotten that
I had. I know some of it was from a stop at Cabela's in Sydney,
Nebraska one time. They had a great deal on 4 packs of thread
in the Bargain Bin area. They might be some weird colors, but
you can tie a lot of flies with these colors and finish with the color
you want to show on the head. We also stopped at a sporting
goods store in a small town in Ohio one time. We were on
vacation and needed to stretch our legs. They had an area of
fly tying stuff that he was trying to get rid off. The one thing he
had left was the tying thread and made me a good deal to get
rid of it. The bottom line is that it will take me years to use up
all of this thread.
I am keeping all of the thread in one place now. I am also using
up the little bits I have on several spools. I am using some of the
weird colors, pinks and fuchsias, to tie the underbodies on flies
and then finish the heads with other colors. But soon I will probably
finish the heads with these colors to see how the flies will work.
I also found several bobbins that I got on sale someplace. I
can keep over a dozen different colors of thread and six colors
of floss ready to go. This is much easier than re-threading
all the time.
I hope your tying is going well at this time of the year. Hopefully
it will not be too long and we can get out on the water. ~ Rick
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