Today’s Fortune: Plan for many pleasures ahead.

Once again, my fortune was right! And I’m just now starting to blog about all the fun stuff we did in the last two weeks! This is shaping up to be the most exciting summer ever!

Today starts my tales of the Ashevegas Adventure! It will probably take a few days to tell about it all, because we did a lot of stuff there. When we first got to town, before we met up with any of the Tractor Girls, we had a covert sock monkey operation to tend to. A few years ago, my mom decided to adopt out several of her vintage monkeys on ebay, because she was running out of room. A man who lives in Asheville adopted three of them. His name is Whitney Shroyer, and he has written a book about sock monkeys. It is called Sock Monkey Dreams, and it is one of my favorite books. I will be reviewing it very soon! Two of our monkeys appear in the book, and my Mom’s name is mentioned in the book, on a page called “Acknowledgements.” That is where you mention people who helped you do stuff for a book. Mom didn’t do much besides put the monkeys in the mail, but we were happy to see that they love it so much at the Red Heel Monkey Shelter.

When we figured out we were actually going to be in Ashevegas to meet the Tractor Girls, Mom sent Mr. Shroyer an email asking if we could visit the Red Heel Monkey Shelter, and he said, “Come on!”….. and so we did!

The shelter is in his house. There are monkeys everywhere, and me and Sassy got to meet all of them!   I took a bunch of photos. I have figured out that Mom is nowhere near out of room for monkeys, because we don’t have anywhere close to this many monkeys living at our house. Here are just a few of my good pictures of my new friends:

We got to meet lots of special monkeys! These are the Kitchen Monkeys. They live in the kitchen, just like the monkeys do at our house. On top of the fridge, in mixing bowls, on the toaster, everywhere!

Santa lives there, too. He has a great big comfy chair on the fireplace mantle, and he has lots of little monkeys in his lap. I think Ashevegas must be where he stays during the summer.

There was a great big monkey with a great big head. I’ll bet he plays that blue guitar. He is sure big enough to.

And these are the most unusual sock monkeys I have ever met. None of the monkeys at our house look like this. Most of them look like me, only old.

These were the very first monkeys to live at the shelter. They belong to Letitia Walker, who is the co-author of Sock Monkey Dreams. She lives at the shelter, too.  These were her monkeys when she was a little girl.

Then we got to meet some of the famous monkeys!  The polka-dot costumed clown monkey in the middle of this picture used to live at our house.  His name is Cyrus Osirus, and he has cymbals.   The monkey in the red suit next to him is the Circus Master, Ollie George.  He is famous, too.  You can read all about them on page 30 of the book.

Mollie Haversham once lived here, too. She was a lonely jilted bride at our house, but when she arrived in Asheville, she met Oscar Ono in a “Who Wants to Marry Mollie?” contest, and they were married in a lovely church ceremony on page 52.  We are so happy that she found true love at last!

But the highlight of our trip was being able to meet Happy George! You may have seen video clips of Late Night with Happy George. (If not, you can click the Red Heel Monkey Shelter Blog link, and check him out!)

We were very excited to meet Happy George, and we got to sit for an interview with him on those famous couches from the “Late Night” set. Happy George was still in his pajamas… we thought we’d interrupted a nap, but Mr. Shroyer told us that Happy George had “an unfortunate accident”, and now wears his pajama top most of the time. (We were too polite to inquire about the specifics of his accident…)

And, of course, we had to get souvenirs! We got magnets, pins, and trading cards to send to our Ravelry friends and monkey pals.  If you want to get some, you can buy them from Socks Fifth Avenue.

And I got my copy of Sock Monkey Dreams autographed!  Mr. Shroyer wrote a message to my Mom, and Happy George added a note especially for me!

It was an amazing visit!  I am so glad we got to meet all these great monkeys!  I was a little worried when Mom first told me that she had adopted out some of our monkeys before I came to live here, but she has assured me that she will probably never put another monkey up for adoption.  I’m pretty sure that she won’t either, because now that we have seen the shelter, it is pretty clear that we have room for lots more monkeys!

Today’s Vocabulary Words: Acknowledgements