The Squonk
“Have you ever seen a squonk's tears? Well, look at mine
The people on the street have all seen better times” - Steely Dan, Any Major Dude Will Tell You
MY IG account was tagged in a video of a beautiful handmade ornament a few weeks ago.
The ornament sampled a long-forgotten drawing of mine! I did a bit of a Google deep-dive and apparently it is very popular! My 2011 drawing of the squonk made its way around cryptid blogs and even became a meme! It is still cropping up on Reddit, on misc blogs about cryptozoology and even the Susquehanna Greenway’s website! This made my day - I had no idea!
What is a squonk? The definition below is pretty accurate:
Basically, the squonk is a pig-like cryptid creature that lives in the forests of northern Pennsylvania. It is described as having skin that doesn’t quite fit right which is why the squonk is to wrinkly!
The squonk is not a well-known cryptid like the chupacabra, bigfoot, lock ness or the yeti. When I stumbled across it, I immediately fell in love with their lore. This led to a drawing that I posted in a long forgotten “blogspot” blog.
I realize now that there aren’t many depictions of the squonk which led to mine being shared in many crypid websites and on reddit.
There are also several memes that use my squonk image as well. These are my favorites:
I’m excited to announce that I am making some squonk-related merchandise! Available now in my etsy shop.
I currently have enamel pins, keychains and two different sticker designs.
I am hoping to add much, much more! The possibilities are endless but right now I have earrings, stitch markers and coasters in the works.
I have saved my favorite part of this for last! In my squonk research, I found an amazing yarn shop called Dye Mad Yarns. They are based in Columbus, Ohio and many of their yarn colorways are based on strange Ohio lore!
Some of my favorites are: Eggshellland, Franklin Castle, Grandpa’s Cheese Barn and Hell is Real.
How did I find them? They made a (now discontinued) colorway called “Squonk” and shared my illustration as a reference to showcase what a squonk is! I reached out to them asking if there was somewhere I could find any remaining skeins of the “Squonk” colorway they offered to make me a special batch of my very own!
One of my (many) summer projects will be to make myself a scarf or two using my 4 new skeins of “Squonk” yarn!
