Monkey business

Following a recent request from a friend for a ‘sock monkey’ I tracked down these simple instructions, and ‘prototype monkey’ was this week born. The lucky recipient of monkey will be my friend’s baby, who is today celebrating her first birthday. She (and her Mum) are possibly learning of monkey’s iminent arrival through this blog post 🙂

I love monkey’s rainbow stripes. I was so pleased to find such a jolly coloured pair of socks that I bought 3 pairs, so monkey cloning will commence shortly! He was dead easy to make. All that was required was a bit of toy stuffing, some thread and some buttons for the eyes. Yesterday, monkey had black beady eyes, but I found them a bit menacing, so today I performed a careful transplant for a blue pair. I don’t want the birthday girl to cry! Prototype monkey is far from perfect. His limbs are a bit wonky, and his arms a touch too skinny. I like to think this adds to his charm…but next time I will try not to sew him up in such an excited hurry.

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Birthday knits

The main focus of my knitting over the last few weeks has been the following pair of not-so-secret birthday socks for my Mum’s 60th (which is today…Happy Birthday Mum!). Underestimating my Mum’s web activity, and powers of observation, I posted a couple of mid-project pics on Flickr to link up with my Ravelry profile. Whoops! Anyway, here they are all finished and modelled by my good self. Thankfully I hear reports that they fit Mum just as well. I was a little nervous they wouldn’t. They were my first pair of  ‘toe-up’ socks, and I accidentally cast-off a little too tightly on the first one. Think I will attempt further toe-up projects in the future. It seemed to knit up quicker than usual..though I’m sure this was just my imagination, or the simplicity of the pattern. It took me a fair few attempts to master the short rows method for turning the heel, and I still wasn’t overly impressed with my results. However, I really enjoyed the magic cast on, courtesy of Judy Becker via Cat Bordhi. The yarn I used for this project was rather special too, a lovely malabrigo in caribeno. It was a dream to knit with, and I shall definitely have to acquire some more for the stash!

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