sit in the sun & think

Sock Monkeys love to sit in the sunshine; thinking. Mum is often busy, so I sit & think often. I think about how I would rearrange the furniture if I was big enough to move it. I think about fancy meals I would prepare for my family if I wasn't so terrified of the stove. I think about all the letters I should write to people, but I never do it. I think about how I would like to take classes in other languages, but I don't know what languages. I think about my shoes & hats and how I'd like more of them. I think about alternate universes full of fruit. I think about what sort of vehicle I should drive. A bananamobile... a wooden wagon... a motorcycle like my Mum... a marshmallow car like the Subhuman... Maybe I should write another poem.

kensington market will make you feel better

After visiting the stupid voting place, it was still a beautiful day, so Mum, S.h. & I went to Kensington Market to buy food. I like Kensington Market! There are all kinds of different shops & it's very colourful. The only bad place is the scary, smelly European Meat Market, which Mum loves, but I sure don't! My favourite shops are the fruit shops! Mmmm, apples & bananas! And never the wrong bananas! Always the right ones! Going to Kensington Market on a warmish, sunny day is good!

sock monkeys don't get to vote...

I sat on the steps with my travel mug of cold tea and waited while Mum & the S.h. got to go in and vote.


It's not fair.

let's go vote!

Yesterday was the big voting day, so I put on my sneakers & my navy school-boy hat, and went with Mum and S.h. to the voting place, a very nice old community centre about one block away, and it was a lovely, warmish, sunshiny day; and when I got there, I wasn't allowed to vote!!

Apparently, Sock Monkeys are not eligible to vote! This is so unfair! And to add insult to injury, they said I was too young anyway! Mum tried to consol me, telling me maybe by the time I'm old enough to vote, Sock Monkeys will be allowed to, but I don't want to wait that long! I wanted to vote yesterday!

Well, it wasn't very exciting anyway. They didn't have cookies for anyone, or tea (I brought my own in a travel mug) or any treats at all.

political promises

The debates have been fast and furious, and the slander campaigns have been downright mean! The Penguins continually polling at the door have been only mildly annoying. The Penguin Parties promises of "fish for all" and "better childcare" have been met with both optimism and cynicism. Realistically, their wonderful promises of "clear skies and an immediate end to global warming" will be impossible to fulfill, though. The Sea Lions have big business backing them, but also a trail of corruption and wasteful money management. No one has even heard from the Herring Party, and most agree they are too small and slippery to have much sway in this election. Members of the Penguin Party have been reported missing, but the Sea Lion Party denies any responsibility, claiming they are running a clean campaign. With such a close race between the two largest parties, and maybe a few voters expected to turn out, it's hard to say who will win, and who will quietly slip back into the icy water; to eat, or be eaten...

Babetta riding

This is Babetta, the spirited, boisterous girlfriend of my shy, quiet bestfriend, Donkey. (Donkey went Hot Air Ballooning with me - see previous posts.) Babetta got to ride a horse at a Maple Sugar Festival. (I'll be writing about the wonderful Festival in upcoming blogthings.)

entrepreneurial tea

It's been a busy couple of weekends for us! First was The Sock Monkey Workshop - lot's of fun! And then, the weekend following (last weekend) Mum had something called an Entrepreneurial Tea! She invited a bunch of arty people over, and they ate brownies & drank tea & even had fancy sugar cubes to go in their tea. yum! They all sat around in the Sockstudio and talked about business & stuff. Aunty Mairead & Natasha came over and brought Chrispin, so while the "adults" were having their Tea and gossiping, Chrispin & I sat in the living room and the Subhuman played music for us. He's going to teach us to play guitar and then Chrispin & I are going to have our own Rockband! I think he's coming over again next Sunday, so we'll discuss our band name and what instruments we want to play & stuff. Maybe Fuu & some of the others will want to join our band... Chrispin already has a name suggested - but it's a secret until we learn our first song!

thank you to Ellaine

I must say a big Thank You to Ellaine, who took some of the pictures I've used in the last few blogthingposts.

Thank You, Ellaine! You are a very excellent person!

People can see more of her art at www.thebabyblanketlady.com

On the topright is Marlee & Marcus, and on the left is Judi, Skinny, Mum, Jake, Lionel & Fuu. Marlee & Judi are Ellaine's own relatives! It's very nice to see family all making Sock Monkeys together, because then their Monkeys will be family, too!

Montys first ever poem

Oh, the wonderful, amazing creativity & diversity of Sock Monkeys! Here is my first ever Poem!! It was inspired by my visit to the Sock Monkey Workshop.


Here are new Monkeys, who were only socks before...
What fun awaits them; who are they made for?



What sights will they see;
what places will they go?

How to Adventure is what they already know!



People sit and sew, for one hundred years, or more!

Making new Monkeys, who were only socks before,

Monkeys to make new friends,
with which to laugh and play,

Get some socks, and needle and thread, and make a Monkey today!

These Monkeys are, from top to bottom, Marcus (made by Marlee), Andy (made by Ruth), Chester (made by Kim), & Lucio (made by Beatrice)!

The Sock Monkey Workshop

In the above picture, taken at The Sock Monkey Workshop at Art Works Art School (www.artworksartschool.com), is my old Adventure pal Donkey & myself, and our new friends: (on the left) a shy, nameless Monkey whose Mom, Ellaine, found him at a garage sale; what an amazing find! and (on the right) Beatrice's Monkey, Macaco, a bold fellow who is older & very well-traveled; and he's even a dj, and has been in magazines & commercials! and (in the middle) Marcus - made by Marlee, the amazing first Monkey of the Workshop & already a Super Hero!!

ladies sewing socks

Last weekend, my Mum taught a Sock Monkey Workshop! She talked about the long & important history of my people, and then the wonderful folks who came all made Monkeys!



I was very excited to be in a room full of socks & sewing & new Monkeys being born right before my button eyes! The creation of new Sock Monkeys is a very joyful occasion and to share it with me were many friends.



Here are pictures of all the wonderful ladies sewing their Socks into Monkeys, and even a very rare picture of my own Mum!

the butterfly zoo

There's a big house at the zoo, just for the Butterflies. What can I say about how incredible Butterflies are?! They seem to float like little scraps of tissue paper in a breeze, where there is no wind. I wish I was a Fairy Monkey and I could fly up & join them.


Mother nature told the Butterfly that they need not follow gravity, but occasionally, they like to come back down to earth & pretend they are flowers.

Kartiko

This is my friend, Kartiko. He reminds visitors to the zoo not to feed the Animals. Just like Sock Monkeys shouldn't eat too much candy (but ohh, it's so yummy!) Animals shouldn't eat the wrong foods (just like the wrong bananas). There are people who make sure the Animals get the right food, like my Mum makes sure I don't eat too much candy. So love your friends at the zoo, but never give them food! (But if you give me a little bit of candy, I won't tell my Mum. I like jelly beans.)

you can come too, too, too

The Primates were really amazing. They're so big! There was a tiny little baby Gorilla, and he was still bigger than me. He was asleep on his mommys tummy. Most of the Gorillas were sleepy. The Orangutans were very orange. There was a mommy & a son, and the mommy wanted to read her book (she was reading a computer instruction manual - who would have guessed the sort of things that might interest an Orangutan?) but the son wanted to play, so she tore a few pages out for him to play with, and he ripped them into little bits. When they saw us there, they came over to say hi. I wish Mum would've let me go into the Gorillas & Orangutans houses to play. The Gorillas had lots of neat toys & things to climb on, and the Orangutans looked really sweet. Maybe Mum'll let me invite them all over for Tea sometime.

how about you, you, you

Monster!!


These big monsters at the zoo are nothing like the dragons I live with at home! I'm very certain that if they could, they'd eat me! Looking down into their pit, I was worried my glasses would fall off - I'll bet their meals sometimes consist of foolish visitors who tried to get their glasses which fell into the pit! I happened to see glasses in the bottoms of some of the other ponds at the zoo, but I'm sure these monsters would just eat the glasses (and clothing and cameras and camera bags) along with the people... After visiting the monsters, I was very careful with my glasses. I only needed them to read the map,anyway.

going to the zoo, zoo, zoo

One grey day, we decided to go to the zoo! Toronto has a nice, big zoo with lots of nice, big animals. We never get to spend enough time there, so we never see everything, so it's important to consult the book & plan your trip to see the creatures that you want. I, of course, wanted to see all the monkeys & primates. There were some camels giving people rides. My Mum should make a Sock Camel... She's never made one, so I will tell her that she ought to! They have very funny noses. There were many strange birds at the zoo, too. I wonder what this one was? Oh, look, a sign! Name that bird!

super monty

A little know fact about me is that I am a Super Hero! My super power is the ability to seek & find Adventure! ...Actually, all Sock Monkeys possess that ability... I don't really have any special super powers, but I do feel pretty super in my cape...
Originally I created this blogthing to chronicle some of my Adventuring, so for the next little while, I'll be writing about some of the amazing places I've been to & some of the neat people I've met. These Adventures won't necessarily be written about in the order that they happened, and they won't even all be about me - my friends Fuzaar & Donkey & Babetta & others have done some traveling, too, so I want them to write here as well. The whole point here is to share Adventure!

Freyas New Years

Note from Monty: I have lots of friends & family living here with me. One group that wanders about the place is the fairys. They're quite tiny & colourful and they wear little felt sweaters and flowers for skirts. Usually they're very quiet & shy, but they have little fairy parties now & then and they like to move things around when no one is looking. It's rare that they go out (or, at least, that we know where they've gone...) but on New Years Eve, Freya the fairy went out to a bar!

Freyas New Years

There was this party at a place called Scruffy Murphy's up on Eglinton Ave. The cover was fairly cheap and the band was pretty decent too. She made some new friends and discovered BEER! When faeries get drunk they don't just feel fuzzy, they become fuzzy. Fortunately it has nothing in common with lycanthropy so the revelers were all safe but being the ectoplasmic being she was, it was literally hard to focus on her after a while. The only way you could have been able to tell that Freya was there was the fact that the band had only two singers but there was a third perfect harmony on "Dancing Queen" and some ghostly fiddle soloing on "Home For A Rest". It makes one wonder where faeries carry their instruments or whether there weren't even more of her aetherial tribe present for the closing of the year celebrations at Scruffy's. Chances are if Freya wasn't the only one of her kind there, the others were probably so wasted they were invisible. I guess that's the way it goes.

Anyway, it ended up that Freya flitted drunkenly home as if she was Woodstock from Peanuts. She had to make several stops in trees and short shrubs on the way home as her meandering flight made her quite dizzy sometimes but Freya made it. I imagine when she woke up there was some other faerie's phone number written in shaky marker on her palm or some such other souvenir from the night (paper crown, plastic champagne glass, etc.) in her coat pocket. The evening helped to get rid of the cabin fever she'd been feeling for a bit since she came to live at the house where she was. Maybe, she thought to herself, the city isn't so bad after all.

xmes is over

It is now a new year! A whole brand new year, full of promise & possibility! A bit chilly so far, but pretty. I had nice holidays. (But then, being a Sock Monkey, I am perpetually on holiday...) I went to various granfolk places. I went with Fuuzar, and we had a lovely time surrounded by colourful presents & good food. I got Sea Monkeys! The Fuu got a jester outfit. Mum got a dvd of her favourite tv show, and the Subhuman got airplanes & helicopters. It was a nice time. We even got to see a christmas pageant puppet play. I'm a little sad christmas is over now.