Here I am today in Manitowish Waters doing a Paper Painting Demo from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 pm. I am finishing up the "Sock Monkey" painting. My "Bucket of Sunshine" flowers if at the right. I had several others there for people to see. I had my business cards and flyers for the class I am teaching in September. Mornings are not as heavily attended at afternoons and evenings. But I had a lot of interesting folks stop by to visit.
One lady informed me that Rockford, Illinois gave sock monkeys their birth. And I discovered she is absolutely right!
John Nelson, a Swedish immigrant to the United States, patented the sock-knitting machine in 1869, and began manufacturing work socks in Rockford, Illinois in 1890. The iconic sock monkeys made from red-heeled socks emerged at the earliest in 1932, the year the Nelson Knitting Company added the trademarked red heel to its product. In the early years, the red-heeled sock was marketed as "De-Tec-Tip". Nelson Knitting was an innovator in the mass market work sock field, creating a loom that enabled socks to be manufactured without seams in the heel. These seamless work socks were so popular that the market was soon flooded with imitators, and socks of this type were known under the generic term "Rockfords". Nelson Knitting added the red heel "de-tec-tip" to assure its customers that they were buying "original Rockfords". This red heel gave the monkeys their distinctive mouth. During the Great Depression, American mothers first made sock monkeys out of worn-out Rockford Red Heel Socks. (from Wikipedia)
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