please, it is august, do not pain me with the ankle-nipping, arena-rocking Magpie Squad rhetoric and ask "WHY does this woman not just knit a SWEATER?" i am knitting a sweater, so there.
but it has been too long since i practiced my fly-tying (such as it is) and i needed a motivation. tying the flies that you use to KILL FISH is unpleasant to me. there are other people around to go through all the requisite fish-killing steps. i just eat the fish. so... what flies to tie?
as most who read this page know, i like henry VIII and his wives the way some people like batman or spiderman. if i had brown bag textbook covers, i'd draw them all and write their names in a bunch of different styles. but, instead, i decided to tie flies in honor of each of the six wives. here are the first three.
the catherine of aragon
catherine was spanish and a devout catholic. rummaging through the secretary in my spinning room, it was easy to come up with something that fit on a fly that pretty closely represented both of these attributes: a little milagra charm of a praying girl. in fact, if one wishes, it is possible to view this little girl as catherine and henry's only surviving child, mary, who eventually went on to a rather wretched period on the throne herself.
catherine was married to henry for seventeen years -- she was a trouper! while no fabulous beauty, she did enjoy being queen. the neutral-colored, striped feathers and peacock-colored dubbing make her "gown" -- and she has a regal gold wire head. i am mad that the feathers got a bit "wrinkled up" when i was tying them on, but live and learn.
the anne boleyn
perhaps i am just too obvious in always wanting to put anne in red. in this case, i had some tiny red feathers from a bag full given to me by rai. real peacock hurl was used on the 'bodice'.
ah, but anne's "head". it is a bead, and it is rather... unattached. i think we all know why!!!
the jane seymour
my first instinct with jane seymour was to go girly, virginal, even angelic. clearly, that's just what i did -- maribou, sparkly little stars. you could almost sell this fly at the disney store -- except for the treacherous barbed hook, and the death's head.
you may remember the death's head fly from nearly a year ago. it was one of my first and i LOST it when we moved. then a few weeks ago, ben found it in the car! i pillaged it to use the death's head bead for jane seymour.
why a death's head for jane, and not for anne boleyn or katherine howard, whom henry had killed? because jane's death is different. jane DIED. jane was taken from the king. king henry was in loooooove with jane seymour, the people of england loooooooved jane, she was faithful, she had given the king an heir, and she DIED. that's why.
i've got ideas on the other three, but they aren't completely fleshed out yet, and i've got display ideas, too.