I knew you'd get some good shots George!

Great to meet up again & to meet Pete as well. Hopefully I'll find the time to meet Pete at Knockhill, but with no Clio's present I could be working after every session.

I've not been through my hand full of shots yet, but not being with my Pentax they wouldn't qualify for here anyway...

Great shots!
Did you use the TC with the tubes (in which case which way round) or just the TC for the last shots?
IIRC Extension then TC gives more magnification than the other way round...

I'm sure progress will speed up once a few workers mature. The boss never gets much manual work done...

I suspect the 25mm would be the length. though the TTL exposure bit sounds like rubbish. You can get TTL metering using a toilet roll for extension!
The contacts for aperture control are very useful especially if you're using modern lenses without an aperture ring.

To increase the magnification of your lens by 1 you would need to add the lenses focal length in extension. Bare in mind that many macro lenses reduce their focal lengths drastically on close focusing...

The last one really shows the advantage of loose framing when shooting motorsports!
I think I'd be inclined to crop some of the grass on the other shots though

I have a lensbaby, but only the inferior (less controllable) Muse model. Fun to play with but mine at least has quirky optics that wouldn't be suitable for use as a standard tilt lens. The Edge 50 might work better for your application. I ended up getting an old micro four thirds camera & a tiltable adapter to my Pentax lenses. It worked out ~£150 much cheaper than a proper shift lens!

Adding Shift makes the adapter MUCH more expensive, so I've yet to play with that properly.

The aperture contacts on a lens/mount are not 'power circuits' they are low voltage data connectors which are read by whether or not they are earthed. This is very common in binary data systems The usual implementation is 5V is 1 & 0V is 0. The cable release on Pentax (& Canon) cameras uses the same system of forcing contacts low to activate.

I was lucky enough to get a rather tatty copy of the Tamron 90mm macro (adaptall2 - 055B version) for £1. After a bit of a clean it performs rather well

If it's just flowers you'll be shooting a 50mm macro might be OK, but even then the increased working distance of a longer lens is a benefit, it's pretty much essential for insects.

Reversing rings as @takuman suggested can be used with modern lenses but really want a lens with an aperture ring. Extension tubes & a coupling ring (to reverse a lens in front of another) are other budget options, which can also give you even more from a macro lens.

Johan has all the options covered in depth on his excellent extreme macro site: http://extreme-macro.co.uk/

Moving closer changes the perspective on anything other than a completely flat subject.
If you were 100m from the subject & walk to 50m away that's halved the distance, so the subject should be pretty much corrected back to the original but you've not halve the distance to the background - this distance may be almost identical (1km -50m isn't far from 1km) so walking has only changed part of the image.

I has a cheap (caniam ?) version for several years & used it regularly at my camera club. Unfortunately I've now mislaid it.
There is also a range of Nikon models available somewhere I've got a pair of stainless lined ones that actually ZOOM, that I was going to convert to adjustable light shades