I just didn’t want to pin this onto the end of the sock post because I think it is good enough to stand alone. Step with me into the Way-Back Machine for a moment...
At times in my life, I have made many sock monkeys. When I first learned, at a workshop in college, I made monkeys out of a compulsion. They are easy to make, and they develop their own personalities. I made a heap of full sized monkeys and then tried to give them away. It is the problem of any craft, what to do with it when you are finished.
For a few years, I was making and selling my little monkeys at the sadly now defunct Bare Hands Gallery. I made them with baby socks and each monkey had little button eyes, and some other piece of flair, a little parrot button or a bell or something. It is exhausting, however, to make 30 little objects creatively without knowing who they are for.
On the other hand, it is really fun to make one object creatively knowing exactly who it is for.
This sock monkey is for my dad. I shot for a rough verisimilitude in the face, and though professionally my dad plays the violin, in his spare time he has been pursuing the mandolin. This little monkey owns my best attempt at a knitted mandolin.
As you may be aware, most fabrics are either knitted or woven, and even commercially produced socks are knitted, just on the tiny needles of a machine. This was my first time making a monkey coming from a more knitterly perspective, and as I sewed the pieces together, I found my hands attempting to graft the tiny stitches instead of just sewing them together. The result might be neater, but not by much, and it probably isn’t worth the eye strain!
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