Quack, swim, quack, swim...

One of my birthday presents included a kit to make a "balloon-tie" duck!  My mom found it at Skeins on Main in my hometown.  One of the "downsides" of buying yarn to make toys, is that you buy a huge hank for only needed a few yards.  Skeins took the estimates for the balloon-tie animals, divided the suggested sock yarn out, and put them together in the kits so you only end up buying what you need!

This was my first time knitting with sock yarn, which is quite thin.  It took a lot of getting use too, and more importantly, I had to adapt my needles to keep the stitches on by wrapping some small hair rubber bands on the ends to act as stoppers.

Lesson learned from this project: I can't moonlight as magician or clown who typically do balloon tie animals.  Even with the picture instructions, I had a difficult time trying to figure it out.  I managed to "make it work", but I don't think it's quite right.  At least it looks good on display!

I also modified the pattern by putting the eyes on the head.  According to the pattern, they're suppose to go on the beak... um, maybe the author never saw a duck before?  At least one that wasn't painted by Picasso?