Rip Van Winkle

Call me Van for short, it sounds better than Rip or Winkle. Those just sound vaguely dirty.

I worked so hard on monkeys last week that it took me a lot of this week to recover. I was also working hard on getting some custom orders done. I still have a few more to catch up on but I'm getting there. The list isn't scary anymore, it's just slightly intimidating. The Artful Phoenix has brought in a couple new custom orders and a few other Very Exciting things as well. If anyone is located in Massachusetts, near North Attleboro, I highly suggest saving postage and picking up your monkey at the Artful Phoenix. There's lots of cool things besides just sock monkeys. There's a photograph that I keep drooling over for instance. I keep saying to myself "I'm going to OWN that!" but I never happen to have any money. Blah!

Last weekend, I almost took a trip to Oz, which is why I haven't posted in so long. Well, that and I've been up to my ears in sock monkeys lately. I've made so many in the past two weeks that I've completely lost count. I made a ton not only for the Artful Phoenix and Etsy, but also for a fundraiser I was doing to benefit EDS research. If you scroll to the bottom, you can see photos from the event last Sunday.

So what does that have to do with Oz? Well, it was outdoors, on a kind of icky day, which required the acquisition of a tent. I'm not an outdoors type. I like outdoors... from behind a nice screen, or maybe through a window. I've never gone tailgating, or camping, or anything CLOSE to something that would require a tent. Therefore, when I bought a tent, I thought that the set up would really BE three easy steps.

Silly me. Silly, silly, silly me. I also thought that the HEAVY box contained everything needed. Those of you who know about tents are probably laughing at me now. I figured that I'd use the 25 pounds of cat litter/bird seed in my car to weight things down if required. Apparently that's NO WHERE NEAR enough. At one point I was physically hanging from the tent trying to hold it down. I failed and the whole thing acted like a massive parachute and I almost blew away with it. I am anything BUT light, and the thing ended up flipping over.

Clearly, I should never be allowed to do outdoor events. I ended up killing the tent and having to throw it away. But thankfully there was no chance of anyone being injured. I had very little sleep the night before, so I was just okay with everything. A bit disappointed that more people didn't show up, but it was the first event like this and the weather wasn't cooperating at all. I'm sure the next year will be better. Also, should I ever need a tent, I'm buying the super cheap one from Benny's so I won't feel nearly as bad when I break it.
The upside is that the event still raised almost their entire goal amount, and there are lots of sock monkeys at the Artful Phoenix and some that just need to get there photos taken for Etsy.

Monkey pile!!! *Hugs all of them at once*

I don't know if you can tell, but there's a bunch of different sizes there. The little white guy with the anchor on his chest is the smallest. Lots of them have Summer-y details on their tummies. There's one with a watermelon slice, one with a sun, a sailboat, a ladybug, a rainbow and the rest have hearts. There are also *two* classic cartoon style ones even though only one is shown (the one shown is already taken). There was four elephants, but two are currently traveling to Australia now. Lucky elephants!

Next up will be Christmas in July monkeys. I have a bunch of monkeys that aren't finished that I wanted to get done last year for Christmas, but I didn't have a chance. I'm going to finish them up and they'll be on sale this July, probably on Artfire, since they're having a Christmas in July event site wide. Etsy is having one also, but it's not organized.

None of the monkeys pictured above are the custom orders I've been working on. Most of those are pictured over on the Facebook page. I have to share my favorite though. This is Boris:

Boris is a special monkey. Last year for Christmas, I didn't have a lot of money with the impending loss of my day job and all, so one of the gifts I gave Ninja Muse and Imaginary Ninja were gift certificates for Monkeyville. They just had to tell me what they wanted, and I would make it. Imaginary Ninja picked a monkey like Jasper, and Ninja Muse asked for a monkey made up of leftovers (um... this was kind of recent, I didn't put off their Christmas gifts THIS long!).

This was something I was REALLY excited about, but I couldn't think of HOW to do it. Then I was working on monkeys this week, and I realized that I had a lot of socks that I either only had one of, or I had enough for just an arm or a leg, or an ear. That's how Boris came to be. I like this idea (it DID come from Ninja Muse).  I think I'm going to use it in the future and call them Foundling Monkeys. They won't have button eyes and patches like Boris (well maybe, but they'll be made from felt or fleece, not regular fabric) and they'll have another special detail that Boris has.

Cutest. Monkey bum. EVER.

I think all of the Foundlings (and maybe the regular monkeys eventually) will have the tiny heart on their bums. I also happen to really like the socks that Boris's tail is made from. I only had one of them though, so a tail was about all I could do with them. No one will really care about this, but I also moved the location of the permanent tags as well. They're now mostly on the back of the monkeys leg, instead of their tails. Depending on the style.

I still have lots of things to finish, so I should really get back to work. It's been full 8 hour days here at Monkeyville, and I'm trying to get as much done as possible while I still can.