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.