I’ve been following the exploits of various sock monkeys on Instagram for some time and kept thinking I’d make one. My biggest problem was socks. I always knit my own and have none that would be suitable. In the end I had to buy some – shock, horror!

I was motivated to get a move on by the excellent tutorial from Four Patch Textiles. They are such comprehensive instructions and I was able to make my monkey in a few hours – I would have been quicker but I had a little visitor.

she’s called Daisy for obvious reasons.

Some progress shots. Daisy is stuffed with some wool noil that my friend Megan, Meggipeg, got for me from REmida, our local recycling shop. It is fabulous stuff and goes quite a long way, I used very little.

I think Daisy’s bigger than most of the other SMs I’ve seen. I used a women’s 8-11 size sock which has resulted in a long body and legs, but she’s very poseable.

I was sewing Daisy whilst I had Miss G, so there were a few distracted moments. The mouth is not on straight, but I like the wry grin that Daisy seems to have. She’s already playing with my knitting and sulked when I removed it!

She recovered quickly and decided to hang off the mantelpiece with one of Mark’s boots, which is being repaired.

Miss G was quite taken with Daisy, playing with her whilst I was making ears and arms

and had a little sleep with her whilst I made the tail

When not relaxing with Daisy, Miss G got into my newly pressed samples from the mordanting course at Fibres West. I was quite excited when she tried to turn a piece into a skirt, but less excited by her sliding around the floor on a precious piece!

I’m not sure I can completely take credit for this blog post as Daisy appears to be creating it; I love a computer literate sock monkey!

Those whiskers have now been trimmed off. Amazing how they only show up in photographs!

I also noticed that I had only topstitched one ear, this has now been rectified. See the top photo for proof.

I am hoping that Daisy will join in some of my adventures like her fellow sock monkeys do with their owners, but know that I will completely forget, so am not making any promises. I have to say that Mark is very taken with her so maybe she’ll join him in some of his activities!