Making my own Jarvis

There's a software development concept known as rubber duck debugging and, having been reminded of it recently, I knew having a duck couldn't hurt during times when I feel stuck with my writing.

A duck could help me work through problems with plot, characters, setting - any number of things.

Looking around, I quickly found The Perfect Duck but he is Out Of Stock and ne'er to return, very sadly. (Yes, I did ask.)

Needing a replacement, I decided to make my own Perfect Duck, one that's more me than the original would have been and hopefully, therefore, a better solution for externalising my ramblings.

I bought three white "racing ducks" from the wonderful people here (Thank you, Lynn!) and the ducks certainly lived up to their name with their arrival speed. They're actually a hard plastic, rather than "rubber" or a soft plastic and I prefer it that way, it means that their surface is more easily customised by simply applying paint or glue, I feel.

Huey, Dewey, and Louie

Wanting to customise them quite substantially, I first had to remove their cute little faces...

Acetone-free nail polish remover to the rescue!

Looks like someone's been eating Cheetos/Wotsits 

Cotton buds/Q-Tips managed to get the rest of the bills off.

Now, time to get creative.

My favourite colour is Aurora Borealis (AKA: "AB" or"iridescent") and I'm a sucker for anything glitter so the idea was pretty easy and pretty obvious. These little beauties would be covered in AB glitter. Duh.

Apart from stripping off their bills and eyes, I didn't do anything to prep the ducks.

I did hot glue the ducks to the tops of soda bottles so that I could access all of the curves of the ducks without covering myself in paint/glue...

I call this "Naked Ducks on Soda"

I used a cheap, acrylic kid's craft paintbrush and applied Mod Podge Extreme Glitter by Plaid - one coat on each duck.

While I certainly got far better "glitter payout" than I expected (it's a great product), it wasn't glittery enough for me. I demand glitter. I used the Mod Podge for two more coats on one of the ducks but on two, I did a single coat more before coating them in loose AB glitter.  I did two ducks this way because I wanted to then compare a duck who had been clear-coated to adhere the glitter better to the duck versus one that hadn't been coated. I presumed the glitter would fall off of the uncoated duck but needed to see if the clear-coating would dull the sparkle of the glitter in any way before deciding which duck was perfect.

Clear-coated duck, natural sunlight, outdoors 

Clear-coated duck, natural sunlight, indoors

Clear-coated duck, "bright white" light, indoors

I've named him Jarvis and I think he's perfect. I see no loss of sparkle from under the clear coat, which is a relief!

He's much more me than the duck I had originally wanted and I still do want that duck, but not as my Rubber Duck Debugging Duck. Jarvis is the duck for me in that regard.

Do you use Rubber Duck Debugging?

How would you customise a rubber duck?

Rainbow ripples

When I was smaller (I'm being very careful here and deliberately not lying to you by saying I *was* a child, past tense because we both know the lay of the land on *that* one!)

Ahem... When I was smaller, I had a wonderful blanket of many colours I called my 'rainbow blanket'. I *adored* that blanket and should ask my mother where it went, actually...

This blanket I absolutely adored and snuggled into quite often in my book-filled, anti-social, daydreaming world of childhood. I could spend hours inside this protective cocoon... safe, secure, snuggled, innocent. Through the messy and sometimes violent divorce of my parents, my rainbow blanket was solace. It didn't walk away, it didn't yell, it didn't scold attention-seeking behaviour, it didn't push a needy child aside to deal with 'bigger problems', it didn't play an innocent child against anyone else in a horrid game of one-upmanship... that blanket was my life raft, in essence, my comfort.

In an effort to more firmly grasp some of the nostalgia for my early years, I hunted high and low for a replacement. Finally, after much deliberation, I discovered a wonderful crochet blanket pattern created by the wonderful Lucy over at Attic24 and the gorgeous colour variation created by KnitKnatKnotUK over on Ravelry.

I spent literally months deciding on which colours to choose for my blanket as, while I definitely wanted a rainbow theme, I didn't want an in-your-face garish rainbow.

The yarn I chose was Stylecraft's Special DK which is acrylic (Reminder: I can't handle animal hair/fur-made fibres) and feels, I am pleased to say, nothing like what people presume acrylic will feel like.

It's soft, smooth and gloriously wonderful in hand.

This is my chosen colourway:

To start the blanket, I chained 297 as recommended by KnitKnatKnotUK and have made some (*very little) progress...

I started with the Violet and have moved to the Royal but seeing them so closely together, I am slightly regretting my choice of colours... At the moment, I am honouring the choices and sticking with my selection in the hopes that it all comes good in the finished product, but only time will tell.

I'm very much hoping that the newest generation of the rainbow blanket lives up to its legacy and becomes a snuggle-inducer for years to come.

(Pictures and progress notes will be forthcoming when they pop into existence!)