Paddling right along

The photo shows a sampling of my personal collection of rubber duckies. A few more have joined the paddling since I took this shot.

The duck in process took a mini-knitter's tour this week. Knitted body, base piece and book were carefully examined by other knitters and tech writers. The general consensus reached was that the instructions don't really provide any answer to the musical question "how is the base piece to be oriented relative to the front and back pieces?" and further, that if the best photo the book had showed a significant "pucker butt" on the duck then I really did need to do a rework.

Mark this as another one of those nice to have my instincts validated but now I have to do way more work -- as one of my pirate ducks would say if it could talk -- Argh!

So the new plan is to extend the knitted base, pick up stitches along three edges to knit the body in the round from bottom to top and do a bit short row shaping to create a tail section rather than a pucker butt.

The biggest problem in the rework is yarn and time. On the yarn front, the previously completed body is the only piece of the duck completed in the original yarn left over from the companion baby blanket. The rest of the duck has been worked with one strand of the older yarn and one of the new to blend the different dye lots.

Cut to the chase, I need to tear out the body and separate the two strands so I can pair one strand to the new yarn -- sigh.