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sun11AM - 6PM
mon10AM - 8PM
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fri10AM - 9PM
sat10AM - 9PM
sun11AM - 6PM
mon10AM - 6PM
tue10AM - 6PM
wed10AM - 6PM
thu10AM - 6PM
fri10AM - 10PM
sat10AM - 8PM
sun11AM - 6PM
mon10AM - 6PM
tue10AM - 6PM
wed10AM - 6PM
thu10AM - 6PM
fri10AM - 7PM
sat10AM - 7PM
sun11AM - 6PM
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wed10AM - 6PM
thu10AM - 6PM
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The holiday season is filled with art projects - from laying the perfect table and making sure the ornaments on the tree are dispersed in a way that is balanced in an asymmetrical way to create conversation and interest to preparing cuisine art for family and guests and, of course, beautifully wrapping gifts. There is also an art to stuffing stockings, and we went straight to the source for a few tips. ...read more
Inspiration
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It’s a magical thing what a pair of hands can do. ...read more
Inspiration | Local Flavor
Asheville | Annex - Valle Crucis | Boone | Hendersonville | Original - Valle Crucis | Waynesville
According to the Small Business Administration, small businesses make up 99.9% of businesses in the United States. Small businesses are credited with creating just under two-thirds of the new jobs created from 1995 to 2021 according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They account for 43.5% of the nation’s gross domestic product. ...read more
Local Flavor
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... Our favorite foods! Food is universal because everybody’s got ta eat! And the last two months of the year are filled with more than their fair share of family meals, work gatherings, special outings to favorite restaurants, tins filled with homemade cookies and fudge, and the anticipation of food traditions handed down from generation to generation ...read more
At Home | Recipes
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Even before we bought the Mast General Store, we were taken by the beauty of Valle Crucis. We’ve heard people describe the drive out Broadstone Road as traveling through a time portal. In the 1970s, fields in the river bottoms would be filled with tobacco, cabbage, or high with hay to feed cattle that were grazing in the summer pasture. ...read more
Local Flavor | Mast Family Favorites
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The lucky few who have seen the Earth from a different perspective – astronauts - all echo the same viewpoint upon their return. Yuri Gagarin, a Russian cosmonaut and the first human to go to space, commented, “Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it.”
Behind the Scenes | Inspiration
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LaVerna arrived for work in the Home and Hearth Department at the Asheville Store one morning and watched carefully as a woman casually walked through the store with two companions.
A group of friends enjoying the afternoon strolling our floors is not an unusual occurrence at Mast, except this woman’s friends were two sock monkeys fully dressed in stylish clothes to fit their tiny bodies. Intrigued by the lady and her stuffed toys, she asked if she could take a photo of the sock monkeys. The woman propped the sock monkeys in each arm, grinned, and said, “Smile everybody! We’re getting our picture taken!”
LaVerna met her stuffed companions named Noah and Dharma. The monkeys had traveled everywhere with their human companion: having their photographs taken on the backs of Alpacas, in line at the grocery store, hanging out in Boston, even spending a Zen afternoon in a Japanese Tea Garden! With this Mast guest’s act of imagination, creativity, and good humor, LaVerna was entranced by the world of the sock monkey. You can read more about Noah and Dharma's adventures by checking out ExistentialSockMonkey.com.
“Everyone in the store calls me the Sock Monkey C.E.O.,” LaVerna confides. Since the day she met Noah and Dharma, you’ll never go into the Asheville store without being treated to one of LaVerna’s elaborate sock monkey displays. LaVerna also encourages all of her Asheville store comrades to read Sock Monkey Dreams: Daily Life at the Red Heel Monkey Shelter, a whimsical book written by local Asheville artists and authors. There are also tales of sock monkeys engaging in all kinds of tomfoolery in the back stock area. It’s no wonder that the Asheville store has trouble staying in stock for sock monkeys.
"the most important element of the handmade monkey is that it's usually made by someone we love."
We see them grinning back at us every day in the Mast Store, but where did sock monkeys come from and why are they loved by so many people? These stuff toys have actually been around for quite a long time. The craze for imitation stuffed animals swept North America and Europe during the Arts and Crafts Movement of the Victorian Era. Monkeys were considered an exotic species at the time, and their novelty made the sock monkey a fixture in nurseries across the nation. However, the first sock monkeys were not necessarily made from socks, nor did they have red lips.
Fast forward to the 1930s when an enterprising young Swedish immigrant, John Nelson, manufactured the first sock without a seam in the heel. The seamless socks were so popular that imitators soon flooded the market. Nelson decided to add a red heel to assure his customers that they were buying the original seamless sock. American crafters of the Great Depression began to create the sock monkey we know today with Nelson’s worn out red-heeled socks.
The children of the Great Depression grew up and handed their dear stuffed monkeys down to their own brood. How to Make Sock Toys, written in the 1950s, became one of the most popular craft books ever published. Inventive homemakers fashioned another generation of sock monkeys for their children and grandchildren. Many adults of the Baby Boom generation remember being given their very own handmade monkey by a mother or grandmother. The sock monkey’s role in history has been sealed as these dear stuffed toys are still being passed down through the generations. The handmade sock monkey's value lies in its originality and sentimentality as each homemade monkey has its own face and body characteristics, making it one-of-a-kind. Though the most important element of the handmade monkey is that it's usually made by someone we love.
Enter 2013: Crafters, photographers, artists, and writers have intensified the immortalization of the sock monkey. The iconic stuffed toy can be found in any form from jewelry and baked goods to calendars and clothing. It really is difficult to deny the soft, squishy, red-lipped grin of the sock monkey. It’s easy to understand why LaVerna, our very own Mast Sock Monkey C.E.O., loves those cute and cuddly little guys so very much.
To have your very own sock monkey delivered to your door, check out our selection online HERE.