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.
