HAYWARD — Dee Lindner didn't always know she'd become the "Sock Monkey Lady." The first time she recalls having seen a sock monkey was in the early 1970s, when her grandmother gave one to her nephew.

Area residents are invited on Saturday to celebrate and learn about a Rockford historical icon, the sock monkey.

Her family didn't have a lot of money, so when Carrie Jones was born, her dad went to the Salvation Army and bought her a sock monkey - a stuffed animal made out of a brown work sock with a red heel.

An Illinois museum's sock monkey collection has officially set a Guinness World Record. Michael Okun, the co-founder of the Illinois Sock Monkey Museum in Long Grove, said he had been working with ...