The History of the Sock Monkey + SOCK MONKEY GIVEAWAY

We Have a Winner, Folks! Congratulations to Laura Belcher for winning the Foot Traffic sock monkey, lovingly made by Carol Waganat. Laura, we will contact you via email to get your shipping information :) A big thank you to all our fans who participated. We appreciate you! Psst... Stay tuned for a Foot Traffic Sock Monkey socks (pictured below) giveaway in the coming weeks. We've Gone Bananas for Sock Monkeys! I love sock monkeys! It is fun to find old ones at flea markets and antique shows. Artists today are taking fun socks, combining them with some imagination and selling them on Etsy.com, or at art shows. Whether old or new, sock monkeys make me smile. I started making them several years ago as gifts and even made tiny ones as holiday ornaments one year. Call me crazy, but I don't think I am alone. There are sock monkey enthusiasts everywhere; I happened to meet a sock monkey collector and maker, Carol Waganat . Carol is our featured guest designer this month. Her monkeys are some of the best I've seen. If you think our Foot Traffic socks are just for feet, let me show you how our socks also make the perfect monkeys and animals. I don't remember exactly when or where my love for sock monkeys began, but I still feel the love today. I have bought them at flea markets, made them from the original Rockford socks and tried my hand using socks from our Foot Traffic offering. I just can't seem to get enough! To appease your eager curiosity about the history of the iconic red-lipped sock monkey, let me start by letting you know it originated around 1932. In the late 1800's, John Nelson, a Swedish immigrant to the U.S., patented a sock-knitting machine that made work socks in Rockford, Illinois. In 1932, to differentiate the Rockford socks from the competition, he added the trademarked red heels to the socks. Early crafters started creating the sock monkeys, and they became so popular that Nelson Mills began including the instructions for sock monkeys with every pair of Red Heel socks. The rest is history. If you can beat the collectors, you can find sock monkeys at flea markets and antique stores, or make them yourself. Today there are so many fun socks available; monkeys can be found in all shapes, sizes, and colors. At Foot Traffic, we have enthusiasts that use to create wonderful imaginative monkeys and other animals. Enter to Win a Foot Traffic Sock Monkey! We asked sock monkey maker to the stars Carol if she'd be so kind as to make us some monkeys from Foot Traffic socks. She obliged! After eagerly awaiting their arrival from Chicago, they showed up at our door this week! You may remember from Carol's blog post last week that we mentioned we'd be giving one away. This is the cute little monkey we'll give away to one lucky winner! Meet Dottie: How Do You Win? A winner will be randomly selected from the first 10 comments this blog post receives. You can comment more than once if you'd like, but your name will only be considered for the drawing once--that is, if you make the top 10! Be sure to provide an email address at which we can reach you along with your comment. This is how we will contact you if you're the lucky winner! Tell us what you think about sock monkeys!