After eighteen years I decided to spring for new Christmas stockings. I had originally purchased four embroidered stockings from Land's End in 1998...Sean, Nora, McIntosh and Meriwhether. Mine had an angel...which is the last thing I'd ever pick, but they only had four designs and I really liked the other three.
West Elm provided stockings 2016...along with a 20% discount and free embroidering and free shipping. Hard to beat that. And they were a cute striped wool felt with no angels anywhere (my apologies to people who like angels--you must be a much nicer person than I am). So now we have Sean, Nora, Mac (since he doesn't like McIntosh) and "dogs"...for Shamrock & Paddington.
The bonus is these stockings hold a lot more. The old ones would seriously hold maybe three little things, so anything bigger than a few inches would be piled on the fireplace. Now there is plenty of room for Santa to stuff my stocking full of craft supplies and chocolate.