Cynthia Stuart’s Sock Monkey Story

Cynthia Stuart is the first to share her sock monkey story here. She’s got a story for each picture, so I’m hoping she will become a regular contributor!

I have a lifetime love for sock monkeys because of my mother Genie Reece Stuart, who taught me many skills and helped me develop my sewing talents. After Genie’s death from cancer, I moved to my brother’s small farm in rural Albuquerque, NM. The farm was on the irrigation canals of the middle Rio Grande River. It sat all alone in the middle of nowhere.

Around Thanksgiving of 2013, I opened boxes marked Christmas. But to my surprise, they contained sock monkeys in various stages of construction that my mother had started but didn’t finish.

I cried and then got busy.

The living room became sock monkey central. To my relief, I was good at construction, and making sock monkeys was extremely helpful and therapeutic. They helped me get through my mother’s death.

I started taking some with me everywhere I went, and people started asking to purchase them.

The stories of how my sock monkeys have been received are long and many and for every photo there’s a story. For example, the volunteers at the St. Michaels food pantry purchased and gave out over 100 sock monkeys at the December food pantries. (I donated one every month for five years until March 2020.)

Or the hospice worker who shared her monkeys to help with end-of-life patients.

The photo of Georgia O’Kee, (center left) is one of the 1976 sock monkeys that I made with my mother Genie. She is very rare because she has an orange mouth and bottom. Those socks were from the Sears catalog and the clerk told us that Nelson Knitting Company was going out of business and that these were the last sock monkey socks. We bought lots of them.

Sadly I’m coming to the end of”Monkeying Around” (too hard on my eyes)  and I think you have the last of my Reece’s Monkeys.

Thank you for your friendship and the love of sock monkeys.