Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 306, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 January 1918 — Anticipating Winter Sports [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Anticipating Winter Sports

Here is a skating set that will add one more fascination to that wholesome and fashionable sport. Japan had a hand in its making, for it is decorated with hand-painted ornaments that are • specimens of the beautiful handicraft of that hand-crafty people, and with applique of light green satin bordered with silver threads. If this was not woven in Japan its design certainly originated there. The cap and scarf are made of satin in a very soft rose color, to begin with. At tile ends of the scarf and In front of the cap there are emplacements of brocade as shown in the picture. On the scarf ends the brocade is sewed along the edges to the scarf with long stitches of heavy, gray angora yarn. Then the entire surface of the scarf is covered with parallel rows of these long stitches. They veil the rose color with a mist of gray, because of the fuzziness of the yarn, and the effect Is beautiful. The scarf is about two yards long and in the neighborhood of seven inches wide, wrapped about the neck so that the novel hand-painted ornament comes'ln front. It is made of several small ■ oblongs of celluloid ’apparently, in graduated sizes, and one posed over the other. They are very much like the rose-colored satin in shade, and the uppermost oblong has a meaningful and < weird looking picture painted on it in several colors. It might be a landscape—upside down —or a scrap of sky and clouds. What-

ever it is, the smiling Japanese shopkeeper assures our honorable stupidity that it is good luck to wear such an ornament. When it is to be found on a skating set like that shown here, there is no doubt that he speaks the truth. The cap fastens with a chin strap that extends from side to side, made of the satin and angora. It is sewed to the inside of the cap on one side and fastens with a strap fastener on the other. The satin is caught up at the front of the cap revealing the green brocade, and held to place by two of those lucky ornaments. Both strap and cap are lined with the soft rosecolored satin.