Even decades after Suttons Bay’s Punky Idema passed away, her hand knit Christmas stockings continue to bring joy each holiday season. Brightly colored and personalized, these stockings are still pulled from basements, hung on mantels, and recognized instantly by so many throughout the town and surrounding communities.
“I’ll run into people on the street, they hear my name, and they say ‘I’ve got one of your mom’s stockings’,” said Punky’s son, Jeff Idema. “It always cracks me up.”
The multi-colored stockings with names stitched across the top became a quiet but enduring thread through the town and surrounding communities. Idema, who served for years as Suttons Bay’s village manager and was deeply involved in shaping public spaces still used today, made close to, if not well over a hundred of them over the decades.
“She was always knitting,” Jeff said. “Whatever else was happening — watching the news, listening to something - she had the needles going.
Jan Ostrowski, Idema’s daughter, remembers watching the stockings take shape as her mom sat on the living floor surrounded by yarn.
“She had a template for the letters,” Ostrowski said. “She’d start at the toe and work her way up. There were little trees and figures, and then the name went on last.”
Though the overall design stayed largely the same, no two stockings were identical. Yarn colors varied, patterns shifted slightly over the years, and the weave itself changed.
“The one she made when I was born is really tight, but later on she used stretchier yarn so you could fit more stuff in them,” explained Jeff.
Idema could knit a stocking in a single evening and sold most of them for around $12, though some were gifted to friends, relatives, and new families in town.
“She had a little side hustle going,” Ostrowski said with a laugh.
Idema moved to Suttons Bay from Grand Rapids in the early 1950s and became a central figure in town life. As town manager, she helped secure land that now includes the marina, North Park, the village hall, and the library.
Outside of municipal work, Idema was known for her love for the holidays and entertaining.
“She turned into a kid at Christmas,” said Ostrowski.
Christmas, her kids recall, was a full production with a fully decorated house, holiday jewelry, and baking projects.
She loved the pageantry,” Jeff said. “She loved traditions.”
That spirit is stitched into the stockings that still get used every year, and often by people who never met the women who made them.
“There are 20 and 30-year olds out there who have one of her stockings and may not even know who she was,” said Jeff. “But they’re something that keeps her in the world of the living.”
The exact number of Idema stockings remains a mystery, but her children are certain there are hundreds.
“She did them for decades. (Add up) the people she knew in Suttons Bay, Leland, Northport — there have to be a lot of them,” said Jeff
For the Idema family, each encounter with someone that has one of the stockings is a reminder that their mother’s legacy extends further than they know.
“She was a remarkable person,” Jeff said. “And this is a fun way to keep her memory alive.”
Jeff and his family would love to know who all has one of Punky’s stockings, so they have set up an email to which anyone with a stocking can send a picture. Pictures can be sent to [email protected]
