The Final Strategy

In the end, I decided to combine the spinning Flemish twist with a very simple weave called twining.  Typically, weaving is done by working one material (called the weft) through another, stationary, material (called the warp).  By combining the twining weave with the Flemish twist, two wefts would be twisting, moving around each other, and moving through a series of stationary warps.  The wefts would begin as twisted bundles of flax and 34-gauge gold wire, with the flax eventually tapering out and being replaced in the bundle by ostrich herl.  The warps would be twisted 26-gauge gold wire.  The wefts would begin all the way at the back of the necklace chain, attached to the clasps.  They would begin as nearly pure flax, but the flax would slowly taper out and be replaced by gold wire spliced into the strands.  Each half of the chain would eventually meet the other and twist together into a single chain, enveloping the front of the hook as ostrich herl was incorporated.  The warps would be attached at the head of the fly and would twist in the opposite direction.  Where the wefts met the warps, they would be split into smaller strands that would envelop the warps.  The interlocking wefts and warps would form a durable exoskeleton on the fly, finally reaching the tail where they would flare out and give way to the grain-head tips of the ostrich herl.  The weaving exoskeleton would envelop an interior made of the ostrich herl wrapped with 25-micron gold wire.