A penchant for primates (of the sock variety)

I’ve discovered I have an underlying fetish. It’s sock monkeys. Early in the summer I purchased this Matryoshka-like nesting doll set:

and the other day I ordered this game for Soph from Chapters:

Except the other day I found this same game at Winners so I bought one for a friend’s toddler for Christmas.

And every morning I slip my sleepy feet into my spectacular pair of Target sock monkey slippers:

Soph has a pink sock monkey in her room, from Toys R Us. Kind of like this one:

Then I got thinking about the history this little monkey…

Red Heel® socks were first cranked out of the factory in 1890 by The Nelson Knitting Mills in Rockford Illinois (John was a Swedish immigrant). What’s Swedish for “socks”? I don’t know. Ask someone at Ikea. Anyway, John set up his sock knitting machines in 1869, and the Nelson Knitting Co was incorporated in 1880 – the first to manufacture socks! His famous toe-concealers were worn mostly by farmers and factory workers, now seen on Ugg-wearing tweens and high school girls. In 1932, John urged his factory workers to lovingly sew a red heel into each sock so people would know they were the real sock-sewing deal.

Sock monkeys were created by clever crafters as toys during the Depression, using Mr. Nelson’s smelly worn out special red-tipped socks. In 1951 Nelson Knitting Mills started to include the directions on how to make your own SM with each pair of their Red Heel® Socks.