oh tananbaum

We have a very tiny christmas tree, so we decorated it with tiny teddy bears, tiny monkeys and fairies. Every now and again, the fairies all start singing carols, and it's very pretty.


Wishing
you
warmth
& cheer!

happy holidays

Happy Holidays to everyone! Mum actually managed to finish her christmas elf duties in good time and she can start wrapping all our presents now! Would you like to know a secret? My Mum actually is a christmas elf! I found a very old picture of her when she was actively working for Santa, handing out candy canes. She still has that hat. It has a bell on the end. Now she's a toy making elf, and maybe someday she'll be a Santa Claus...

Here is a picture of a bunch of us Sock Guys giving the Subhuman a hug - everybody should hug each other when the "holidays" get overwhelming.

All the best of the season to everyone, and to all a good recovery from all the shopping & wrapping & eating & merriment!!

at the gift market

Today Mum & I had a lovely day visiting! We went to the Annex Christmas Gift Market (www.annexmarket.com) so Mum could visit friends and I got to visit my little brother Chrispin. He was adopted by Mairead & Natasha, who make soap (www.pioneerarts.ca). They are awesome ladies, and they are even extra awesomer, because they make yummies, too!! Mum was chatting & chatting & chatting and she had a wonderful time and didn't want to leave. She bought yummies & I bought hats. Actually, they are Christmas trees, but the Foo and I are wearing them as hats! Jo and her Mom make them (www.forbiddencolors.ca). Mum had such a lovely time chatting endlessly with everyone, and I had such a lovely time visiting with Chrispin. What nice & talented friends we have! And it was even a beautiful day outside!

a visit

The Subhumans good friend Lorne is visiting from far, far away, so we all went out to Pho. I have been here before and I must say it's excellent, but our hearts were broken today with the news that they will be closing in about a month, so everyone, GO HERE! and make their last month wonderful. The food really is superb and the lady that runs the place is supernice. They are located on the south side of Dundas just west of Beverly and the AGO. I don't know the name of the place, but there's a really big MOOSE in front of the place that makes it very easy to find...

my mum

I want to take a blogmoment, and write a little about my Mum. She doesn't really want me to write about her, but I think I ought to, since I write about her already a bit, and after all, she's my Mum. She is an artist. She makes Sock Monkeys (like me) and Sock Animals, but she also makes lots of other things, too. She seems to be very busy all the time. She has a terrible memory and is always running about the home looking for things. Everything is always messy because she never cleans anything. The poor Subhuman has to do all the work. (I'll write about him later.) I don't really mind the mess, but I wish she would spend more time in the kitchen making brownies & pies & sandwiches & jello... She drinks tea all the time, all day long. She usually has messy hair & messy clothes, and watches too much TV. Her favourite program right now is Baretta. She sits on the couch sewing Sock Monkeys, drinking tea, wearing big red pajamas. In the Sock Studio she sews & listens to loud music like Tool & drinks more tea. I think she is very nice & fun, but then, she is my Mum, and I might be biased.

too busy

My Mum is so busy right now that she hasn't had any time to help me type! I wish I was bigger so I could help her at the big Show. She says I can't go or someone will want to buy me! Liam got to go to the Show and now he has a whole new home and a family! Mum says it is important to find good homes for everyone, but I wish they could all stay here. Mum says it would get very crowded... (It's already crowded!) I'm not allowed to go to the Show, but Mum brought me a picture. Her display is so tiny, but very crowded. I'd have fun playing on it, but I don't want to get sold! The Show will be over soon, and then she'll come home and spend more time with me.

monkey legs

It seems to keep getting crazier every day. My Mum was out all day. She took a lot of stuff from the Sock Studio with her, but she left a big mess of unfinished Monkeys laying around! I cleaned them up for her, but it's really weird - they're all just bodies & legs & tails... Kinda creepy... They have no faces yet. I'm the one in the middle. (With the face.) Maybe some'll get finished soon. Oh, I hope so!

busybusybusy

When you're in the Santa Claus business, Christmas becomes a really crazy time! My Mum is trying to make Sock Monkeys like a devil, all the while working on her website and trying to eat, too! Thank heavens for the Subhuman, or it would be those horrible noodles every day! (Mum may like them, but I sure don't!) I am helping her as best I'm able, but I'm really much too small to be of much use. She lets me pick out some of the socks. She does all the sewing, stuffing (with a little help from the Subhuman), sewing & so on. Mainly, I just pick out socks & watch the maddness... And it's mad! My Mum is going to be selling all my new friends at some big Show here in Toronto, staring in less then a week - I won't even get to play with them! Maybe she'll let me help her name them...

You can find information about this Show on her website - www.roroart.com, but here's a sneak peak at a new page that isn't even up yet! She's writing about the History or Sock Monkeys! Very important stuff! My people have been around for a century! And soon, since Mum has to stop helping me now and go back to sewing, there's be more of us!

the champagne toast

" The wind has welcomed you with softness.

The sun has blessed you with warm hands.

You've flown so high and so well

that Nature has joined you in laughter,

and set you gently back again

into the loving arms of Mother Earth."

- the Olde World Tradition of Balloon Flight

landing on a runway

The basket had footholes, to climb in & out with, but to us Sockfolks, they made excellent little windows. Our pilot said, "See that cornfield? With the grass runway next to it?" (We couldn't really see which patch of green he meant amongst all the other green, but we nodded.) "That's where I'm going to land us." And he did! We got lower & lower, and then could see the place he meant. We actually dragged through a bit of the cornfield, and wet, dewy green bits of cornplant were flying into the basket through the foothole/windows, covering Commander Mom and Juanita with soggy flecks of green. They yelled, but it was a very soft landing; only a tiny bit of bumping. We actually landed in a small private runway for a man who has an ultralight plane. He was up in the air when we landed on his runway, and he had to wait for us to roll up our balloon before he could land himself! He and his wife joined us in a champagne toast to our balloon flight.

After all that flying, Juanita was exhausted, so I joined her in a nap on the lawn when we got home.
It was still ridiculously early in the morning!

flying over birds

The flight was about an hour, but it seemed both longer, because we traveled so far & so high, and shorter, because it was so gentle & easy! Donkey, who was probably the most excited of us to be flying, wanted to pilot the balloon. As we flew, most of the time, we weren't sure where we were flying over, or flying to, but the landscape below us kept changing - roads & apartment buildings, houses & backyards, trees & golf courses, fields & farms.

We flew over the farm where my furry friend Bene was born. He has his own blog at www.benethedogblog.blogspot.com

One of the most incredible parts of the Adventure was flying high over birds! You don't generally think that sometime you might see birds flying about below you...

surprise good morning

It was wonderful being up so high, and yet, it didn't feel so high. Because the wind was moving us, we were moving at roughly the speed of the wind, and there was no feeling of wind. There were no bumps or sways, and if you weren't looking at anything, you could just barely feel the basket slowly spinning. Our pilot was great. I bet he's never had so many passengers on one flight before!

We floated right over Richards Parents house, and he phoned them on his celphone! It was pretty early, and they were just having their morning coffee, and Richard said, "Come outside onto the deck and look up!" They could see us waving at them! What fun! What a lovely way to say "Good Morning!"

looking at the edge of the world

Far away, on the curving, distant horizon, is my home city, Toronto. You probably can't see it, but when this picture was taken, up in our balloon, we could see the CN tower as a tiny, pointy silluette, right on the edge of the world, with a vague hint of the buildings around it. The sun was glaring at us and everything had a yellow haze. It was the most amazing moment of the entire flight.

gently up into the sky

Juanita wanted to go Hot Air Ballooning for her birthday (she likes to do something special every year!) & my Mum loves being up high, so they got some tickets for a dawn flight with friends. Hot Air Ballooning requires good weather... Our first scheduled flightdate, near Juanitas birthday, was cancelled because of rain. Our second flightdate would have been near Richards birthday, but it rained. A new date near Michael & Mums birthday... rain. Commander Mom got a ticket, too, but it even passed her birthday in winter and we couldn't find a date that we could all be together and fly in nice weather! It took a whole year, but finally, after Juanita & Richards birthdays and before Mike, Mum & Commander Moms birthdays, we found a nice morning!! The day dawned lovely, and we got our call to fly!

First, the balloon was brought out and a huge fan blew air into it while Juanita & Commander Mom held the edges. Mum & I could actually walk right inside the balloon as it was filling! The air was heated and the balloon started rising. We all climbed into the basket. It was tiny, and there were a lot of us. There was the pilot, two nice ladies we didn't know also having birthday flights & us - me, Juanita, Mum, Commander Mom, Michael, Richard, Sam, Monkey & my good friends Lumpy & Donkey. Up we floated, gently into the sky.

Sam, Monkey & Lumpy must have been afraid of heights, because they stayed low in the bottom of the basket the whole time, but Donkey proved to be a bit of a daredevil! It was a beautiful and cool and fun to watch the cars and houses grow tiny, listening to the traffic sounds, and watching folks get ready for work. The sun rose hazily, and the most amazing thing was watching the world curve away under us. Way high on the horizon, from where we were in Kitchener-Waterloo, we could see Toronto and the CN Tower as a tiny silluette on the very edge of the world. It was pretty spectacular!

our guest departs

Juanita hasn't stayed very long... She's going to stay with her family for a while now. They're very far away in Alberta, so I won't get to see her! I shall be very sad! I will have to write her letters, & I'm not very good at writing! Perhaps I will just draw her pictures, & she can visit my blogthing sometimes, I hope. Juanita is a very nice person; I hope her new adventure is going to be wonderful!

My Mum has to work tonight making more Sock Monkeys (actually, she's mostly making Sock Bunnies, even though she's supposed to be making Sock Monkeys) so she can't help me write this blog for much longer, but for my next blogposting, I plan to write about my Hot Air Balloon Adventure with Juanita, and I have some very neat pictures!

a guest!

Big news at the homeplace! One of my favourite people, Juanita, has come to stay with us! She was staying with some bad people who weren't good to her, so now she is going to stay with us for a little while and we must be extra good to her! Juanita is a fun person who is almost always smiling and I get to hang out with her sometimes - We've had some very cool Adventures (which I will chronicle soon) and hopefully we will have some fun before she finds her own homeplace... Right now Mum has made a tiny little room for her in the studio, so her bed is surrounded by big boxes of socks! Juanita is extra-excellent because she brought cookies!!

monkey

This is me! This picture was taken some time ago, but it's me in a tree in Autumn. Ah, the trees in Autumn! I love to climb, and the more colourful, the better! It's important to see the world from as many branches as possible...

Finally I have gotten a picture up! There I am, and as you can see, I am indeed short and mostly grey. My paws are navy and my tail is very skinny. I wish it were longer so I could grab bigger things. (But isn't that just a metaphor for existance!)

not an easy thing!

This blogging stuff isn't easy! From the date of my last post until now, I have been desperately trying to enter a new post (hey, I'm a sock monkey, I have a lot of time on my paws) and has it ever been impossible! This blogthing is tricky! But it seems to be working now... I hope...

I have wanted to write about my new shoes (they're blue!) but they don't feel that new anymore. I shall have to go out somewhere special and wear them, but I don't know where.

Here in the homeplace, we've been listening to records. Mum and The Subhuman went out and brought back a big bunch of old records. I've been hanging out in the livingroom , so I've been getting to listen to them all. There's a George Carlin one, and a Sesame Street one, and a pile of different musicals, but the best two are a folk one with different people, including Mason Williams, and Bill McNeil's "Voice of the Pioneer".

Mason Williams is very funny. We already have a record of him, and he does nice music too, but I like the funny stuff. On this new record, he has a song called "Them Toad Suckers" which is completely silly!

On the Voice of the Pioneer record there are some amazing stories told by old people remembering when they were young, and in many cases poor. What amazing people they were! Some of the stories were very funny, and some very moving. It is wonderful to hear these stories, and it's an old record, so the stories on it took place a very, very long time ago!

Records are pretty neat. I think they are exactly the right sort of thing for a sock monkey to listen to.

first blog...

My name is Monty and I am a Sock Monkey. I am not very old. I am very short and I am mostly grey. Sometimes I wear sneakers and hats. Sometimes I get to go on Adventures, so I am making a blogthing to show some of my pictures. (My Mum is a photographer and she is helping me with the typing.) It's going to take me a while, I think, to learn how to use this blogthing, but I will try to tell good stories and show some of the fun places I have been and will go to...

I have many friends, and I will get their help with this blogthing, too. I will introduce them properly in later blogs. Hopefully, I will learn how to put up pictures soon.