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The Stockings Were Hung by the Chimney with Care

This year Susanna Leonard Hill’s Annual Holiday Writing Contest featured bad guys. The challenge was to create a new holiday bad guy and feature them in a kid-friendly story of 250 words or less. I was delighted to learn that my Indomitable Sock Monster (the lesser-known cousin of the Abominable Snowman) received an honorable mention!

Read on and you’ll find out where all those misplaced socks actually go …

The Stockings Were Hung by the Chimney with Care

By: Katie McEnaney

Long before washers, long before dryers, 

Before electric lights and gas-only fires, 

There lived a monster. 

His quest? To steal one sock from every pair ever knit.

No matching sock in your drawer? Indomitable Sock Monster.

An odd number of socks left hanging to dry? Indomitable Sock Monster.

What could be done to stop his sock-stealing rampage? The townspeople were at a loss.

But clever Siobhan had a plan. She knitted the largest, longest, most colorful pair of socks ever seen. Irresistible. 

Siobhan nailed them up near the chimney and tied the loose end of the yarn tightly to the nail.

That morning, one sock had been stolen! But it left a trail of yarn behind as it unraveled. Siobhan raced out the door to follow the yarn … it wound around town, across the meadow, and up the hill to the abandoned castle.

There she spied the monster: 

     his terrible teeth … 

          his horrifying horns … 

               his mouse-mittens and squirrel-sized scarves … 

Wait, what? 

The monster was turning stolen socks into gifts for the Winter Solstice?

The town came together and declared a truce. Every Solstice townspeople hung their largest unmatched sock above the fireplace for the Indomitable Sock Monster. He stole his fill of socks on that night only, leaving the remaining pairs intact for another year.

Everything worked out perfectly until a jolly old man started interfering and using those single socks for his own purposes …

     but that’s another story.

Snolloween #Halloweensie

The 12th Annual Halloweensie Writing Contest is sponsored by Susanna Leonard Hill, and you can read all the details here at her blog. The challenge is to write a 100-word Halloween-themed story using three specific words. This year’s words were slither, treat, and scare.

In trying to think of original ideas for things that slither, I thought about the Halloween Blizzard of 1991, and the year we trick-or-treated by car. If you enjoyed the story, please leave a comment on the blog or over on the official Halloweensie post. Thanks!

Snolloween

A sudden snowstorm stopped the animals’ annual Halloween pumpkin party.

“Too cold for costumes!” chattered a cheerleader chipmunk.

“Too windy for wands!” whined a witchy weasel.

“I’m scared of snow!” stammered a swim-suited squirrel.

Helpless and horrified, they huddled in the tree hollow behind their newly-carved pumpkins. Snow slithered and swooped toward them, coming closer …

  and closer. 

Luckily, the lit jack-o-lanterns held firm, stopping the sneaky snow.

“Halloween is saved!” they cheered. 

Pom-poms, brooms, and sand shovels attacked the mess. Bravely, Squirrel scooped snow into three bowls, and Chipmunk squirted syrup. 

A tasty treat and a toast to Snolloween!

But Dorothy Did #SunWriteFun

Photo from https://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/files/dorothy_garrod_at_cambridge.pdf

But Dorothy Did

a brief biography of pioneering archaeologist Dorothy Garrod
By: Katie McEnaney, 200 words

     From the beginning, Dorothy did the unexpected. Most girls in 1921 didn’t attend university, but Dorothy did. She studied anthropology, wondering and learning about people in the past.

     Most people never set foot inside a cave, but Dorothy did. She crawled in, dodging stalagmites and ducking stalactites. She witnessed wonders: herds of painted bison and thousand-year old footprints. 

     Few archaeologists considered cave sites, but Dorothy did. She excavated caves across Eurasia. At Mount Carmel her teams dug 75 feet down, uncovering 75,000 years of prehistory.

     Few excavations employed women, but Dorothy did. She hired local women as crew members and launched the careers of many female scholars. Some years her team was entirely women.

     Few archaeologists worked and traveled widely, but Dorothy did. Rather than focus on one area, she pondered how sites around the Mediterranean were related. She uncovered a new culture, Natufian, and proved that these first farmers were connected across Afro-Eurasia.

     Women could not become professors at universities, but Dorothy did. She was the first female professor at Cambridge. She worked tirelessly creating a program for studying early humans.

     Explorer. Archaeologist. Professor. Not everyone lives their life exploring their passions to the fullest, but Dorothy did.

Shared for #SunWriteFun 2022