This time of year always gets me excited about making stuff. I find my energy wanes for deeper forays into the unconscious (winter will get me back to that soon enough) replaced by whatever craft or project catches my fancy. This season there have been two: felting and SOCK MONKEYS! My friend and colleague, Barbara Fish, seeing that her art therapy interns were seeming a bit frazzled and burnt out bought a bunch of baby socks and held a tiny sock monkey making session in her supervision. This is genius for several reasons, making stuff, especially small easily finished stuff, gives one a sense of accomplishment, and two, when, like art therapy students, you are overwhelmed with how much pain there is in the world and how relatively little you can do about it, despite your best intentions, well your energy seems to seep down your leg and leave you limp. When I was in school and overwhelmed I used to go to the Children's room in the library and read 10-12 kid's books. Hey, I just read 12 books! Feels good and usually the message was at least as important as anything I got in my other studies.
I got interested in making monkeys. Never one to go halfway, I decided I would make sock monkey kits as holiday gifts for my nieces and nephews and assorted young friends. Then my sister said I'd have to show them, except they're in NJ and I won't see them for awhile. So, of course, I decided to make an instructional video! My experiment is this: I sent a kit with all the supplies to make a sock monkey to seven kids, will they do it or will that seems like a boring or bizarre invitation from Aunt Pat aka PattyCakes? Stay tuned to find out...
