The Monkeyville Residents

Monkeyville was started in December 2009, when a wonderful friend asked me to do a photograph a day in December (known as the DePhoMo challenge). I'm not a photographer at all, but I took on the challenge, and within days, it was no longer DePhoMo, but Sock Monkey Month (conveniently abbreviated to SoMoMo). This proved to be a popular endeavor, and soon, a larger cast was needed for the photo shoots. I had to branch out from being just a monkey photographer, to a monkey maker.

The very first monkey that could be called a Monkeyville Monkey was George. He was sewn entirely by hand, which took two full days, because I had a lot of learning to do in regards to sewing.

George didn't come out looking quite like a normal sock monkey, his ears have a rather Mr. Spock appearance, but for a first try, he came out okay. No one is ever perfect the very first time they try something.

I continued on, because I needed several monkeys for photoshoots planned.

Jacob Monkey was second resident. He takes his name not from the famous Twilight character, but from both Jacob Marley (it happened to be near Christmas) and a character from a novel I was working on for NaNoWriMo. In the picture, you can see Sirus Monkey (a mass produced monkey) looking at the newest Monkeyville resident.

After the purchase of the Magic Monkey Making Machine (the Monkeyville name for a sewing machine) sock monkeys began to take over.

(left to right: Dante, Chloe, Ellie, Matthew, Michael, and Josh Monkeys)

The more I practiced, the better I got, and soon, the monkeys were leaving the safety of Monkeyville. Thankfully, the first one to venture out into the world was Ninja Monkey. He was fully equipped to tackle serious bouts of writer's block (sock monkeys are excellent at this) as well as defeating any evil pirates!

There are several other monkeys that live here in Monkeyville, but they're not Monkeyville natives. The two that show up most frequently are Sirus Monkey, the resident artist:

 and Eli Monkey, the cheeky college student.

These were two of the very first sock monkeys I ever owned. Eli is a Monkey Shines monkey, while Sirus is mass produced. Neither seems to care about the other's history though, because they're very much in love.

Eli and Sirus traveling to Sirus's home town on the island of Martha's Vineyard. They're in Monkey-love pure and simple.