Salina ? ‘Twas the night before Christmas, and Eleanor Rindt hung her stockings with care – 26 of them, to be exact.

There was one for each of her five children and their spouses, her 13 grandchildren and her three great-grandsons.

For most of 2004, Eleanor had individually stitched and decorated each felt stocking, adding beads, sparkly sequins and decorations specific to each family member’s hobbies or interests. At the top of each stocking, she ornately stitched their first names.

She had intended to make stockings for just her great-grandsons, but after finishing those earlier in the year, she decided to include the whole family.

She managed to keep the project a secret from nearly all of them.

“A few knew I was making stockings, but no one figured out I was making one for everybody in the family,” said Eleanor, 70. “I’d be working on one, and one of the kids would come over and I’d have to hide it from them.”

Full-time obsession

Each stocking took two to three weeks to complete, and what started as a part-time project soon grew into a full-time obsession.

Canton Rindt, 18 months, left, points out his Christmas stocking as his grandfather, Charles Rindt, looks on in Salina. Canton's grandmother, Eleanor Rindt, made individually stitched and decorated stockings for each family member last year

“Sometimes it would be after midnight, and she’d still be working on one,” said her husband, Charles Rindt, 68, a retired Salina police officer. “I’d keep getting up and telling her it was time to go to bed, and she said she just wanted to add one more thing. It went on and on.”

Making 26 stockings hardly was work for Eleanor. She has been cross-stitching and sewing most of her life. For previous holidays, she made beaded tree skirts for family members and baby quilts for her great-grandsons.

Even so, when family members came to visit that Christmas morning, they never expected to see several rows of stockings hanging neatly along the living room wall on a 10-row wooden tier Charles specifically had built for them.

“Everyone was so impressed with the work Grandma had put into them,” said granddaughter-in-law Heather Rindt, 27, the mother of Eleanor’s great-grandsons Easton, 5, Dayton, 3, and Canton, 18 months. “After you grow up, you forget about how special Christmas stockings are. And then when you see these, and then you know they’re all homemade, it’s really something special.”

‘Capture their personalities’

Each stocking was put together from patterns and materials that Eleanor purchased.

“There are hundreds of kits out there, so I had to look for things that would best capture their personalities,” Eleanor said.

For example, her son Brian, 40, lives with his family near Topeka and likes to fish at a nearby pond. So Eleanor designed a stocking depicting a group of penguins at a fishing hole. A pipe cleaner serves as their pole, which hangs off the stocking and has a felt fish dangling from its end.

Granddaughter Amanda, 16, daughter of Eleanor’s daughter Janet and Eric Dowson, loves music and plays viola, so Eleanor sewed a musical Santa strumming a guitar while a penguin plays a felt accordion.

Granddaughter Nora, 15, daughter of Salinans Larry and Becky Rindt, is active in her church, so Eleanor designed a manger scene that has angels overlooking the baby Jesus.

Eleanor and Charles have stockings of their own, but those were made by a family friend from Colorado. Glued onto the industrious Charles’s stocking is a set of tiny plastic tools, while Eleanor’s contains the tools of her trade: a small plastic rolling pin, a pair of scissors, a thimble and a sewing machine.

Home for Christmas

After Christmas 2004 festivities were finished, Eleanor chose to keep all the stockings at her house until next Christmas.

“That way, the kids will be sure to come over and see us,” she said with a laugh. “If they don’t, they don’t get what’s in their stockings.”

This year, the entire family plans to gather at Grandma’s house at Christmas to view their stockings and retrieve their goodies – except one. Grandson Harrison Rindt, 21, is a soldier in the U.S. Army, stationed in Iraq. He is not expected to return home until sometime next year.

The family does expect a telephone call from him, though, and plans to load his stocking with an abundance of goodies.

Eleanor is hardly finished making stockings. She has several more in the works, which she plans to complete as her family continues to grow.

“I’m doing it in case there’s more babies or someone else gets married,” she said. “We’ve only got three great-grandkids, so I’m sure there’s a lot more to go.”