Sock monkey love

While I can assure you that I haven't been spending all my waking hours crafting (though that'd be much more fun that what I have been doing too much of -- working, shoveling, thawing, moping), in the spirit of Monday's post on 'Making time for creativity', I'd like to share how I spent the first day of 2011.

Many moons ago, I’d spend New Year’s Day in a prone position with a bottle of Tylenol, some ginger tea to soothe a queasy belly and a disjointed collection of hazy memories of the shenanigans from the night before.

This year, I made a sock monkey.


I have a fairly intense aversion to all the plastic crap, I mean toys, on the market nowadays and while my kids don't have too much of that stuff, I've been trying to instill an appreciation of "simpler" toys.

Ok, truth be told, I'm obsessed with llama and alpaca wool and when I found this sock monkey "kit" (two 'flawed' socks, plus instructions) at Rancho Tranquilo, a local alpaca farm, I had to make one... or two... or...

They're fun and really easy, too. Start with a sock...


Turn it inside out, cut down the centre and sew up two legs...


Turn the sock right-side out and stuff with filling. I wish I'd had some natural fleece or fibre, but I only had synthetic on hand.

Then cut pieces from the second sock to make the face, tail...

... arms and ears. Sew on a mouth and some button eyes and you're done! Well, almost.

Keeping in mind I didn't start this project until 4:00 p.m., due to multiple kid requests, ("Can I help?"), questions ("Are you almost done?"), whimpers ("Is there anything to eat around here?") and barn chores, it was almost midnight before I got the monkey finished. But knowing my daughter's penchant for flair, it just didn't seem right giving her a "naked" monkey.

Even sock monkeys need accessories.

Seeing the look on Ella's face the next morning when she brought monkey down for breakfast (I tucked it into bed with her as she slept -- so sweet!) was worth staying up until 2 a.m. knitting an itty, bitty pink scarf and making a floppy garden-style hat with matching fringe. Yes, I actually did that.

Of course, Ella being Ella, she'd already embellished the monkey with her own sense of style.

So without further ado, meet Rosemary Rosebud Butterfly, the sock monkey.


And yes, I do fully appreciate that she's surrounded by plastic crap, I mean toys. Sigh.