Today’s Fortune: Now is the time to call loved ones at a distance. Share your news.

This is good advice. We called my brother today. He is a grown-up, and he lives in North Carolina. His name is Aaron. He works for the Army, and he has been in a place called “Afghanistan”. He got back a couple of months ago. Afghanistan is a long way from here, and it is not a very happy place to be. There is a lot of fighting and stuff going on there. I think everyone there should get a monkey. Then they would all be happy.

He did not know about my blog yet, so we called and shared the news about it with him. He called a couple of weeks ago and shared some very good news with us. We are going to be getting a new grandbaby! Mom will be making another monkey so that this baby will have one, because our other grandbaby got one several months ago.   The book we use to make monkeys is called Knitted and Felted Toys.  Me and Dharma have decided to review this book, because it is very good for making monkeys.

The pattern Mom uses is called “Funky Monkey”, and the book is by Zoe Halstead.  This is the monkey pattern from the book.  Mom used Cascade 220 Heathers and Cascade 220 Paints in red and orange for the first monkey she made, because she liked the one in the book so much.

In case you don’t have one, you should know that grandbabies are a lot of fun. My other brother, Shawn has one, and we love her very much. Her name is Lily, and my mom made her a very good monkey.   Mom made some changes to the pattern, because if you follow the directions,  the monkey is very square and his head is kind of floppy.  The best thing to do is to round the shoulders, the head, and the rear end, and when you sew the head to the body, leave an opening to stuff the monkey at the neck.  That way, his head is not all floppy, and you don’t have to tie a scarf around his neck to help him hold his head up.  This is the monkey Mom made for Lily.

The patterns in this book are “felted”.  That means that you knit the pieces kind of loose, and then you put them in the washing machine with hot water and some tennis balls, and they shrink up and get thick.  Then you can sew them together and make a monkey.  Felting is a lot of fun!

Mom made a big sparkaly purple monkey for her friend, Beth.  She used Cascade 220 and Berocco Crystal FX for the sparkaly parts.  He turned out really good.  He has a nice smile.  Beth named him “Tron”, and he is one of our friends.  He lives in Connecticut with Beth and all of her birds.

This book has lots of other good patterns in it, and I hope we try some of them soon.  There is a very good puppy that we will probably make for our next TSM visitor, and the penguin, donkey, and kitties in this book are very good, too.  There is even a cow that I hope Mom will make for me some day.

We give this book 5 pezzes, plus a bonus cheeto for having a good cow pattern!  If you want to make a fun monkey that is easy to do, this is a great book!

I really like it when Mom lets us blog about knitting.  She is working on our sweaters, so we will get to do it again soon – I hope.  Dharma needs a sweater.  It would go so much better with her hat than my bowling shirt does.

Today’s Vocabulary Words: Afghanistan, felted