Pysanky

My sister and I first learned to make Pysanky (Ukranian Easter Eggs) when I was about ten or twelve and some friends invited a group of girls over to learn it together. Since then, we've done the same thing several times, to teach others this amazing art!

Here we are, "making eggs" on my sister's birthday, eons ago

(probably when that house was still new, too...ha!)

And here, many years later, but sill a few years ago

I'm thinking it's time to get a large group together again!

Naturally, you need an egg to start with. I hear that farmfresh eggs are wonderful to dye. If you happen to own geese or ostriches, their eggs are often used too. If your egg is not farmfresh, it needs a water/vinegar bath to help clean the shell of any chemicals etc that would get in the way of the dye.

The other tools are your dyes themselves, beeswax, a candle (stubs are fine, so hoard them! We've started using Advent candle remnants) and a kystky. You use this tool to scoop the wax, melt it, and draw with it on the egg.

After washing the egg and letting it come to room temperature (wax can't stick to an egg with condensation from the cool egg), draw the most basic divisions of the design you have chosen with pencil. This usually means quarters, and then eigths, or thirds/sixths.

 And then you might choose to sketch more details of the design. I've learned the hard way that the perfection of these pencil guidelines can make the difference between a precise, perfect masterpiece, and big mistakes.

When you're ready, use the kitsky to fill in the areas you want to stay white with wax. The wax seals the shell in from the dye. Whenever possible, draw your design in a continuous way. For example, instead of drawing the sides of two squares separately and making them connect at a corner, I drew a single line that became part of two different squares. This helps the design look much more uniform.

Keep on goin' (I wanted this one to have a lot of white)

Nope, we've never had the pencil show through in the end, even on the white.

Then you dip the egg in the lightest of the dyes you choose to use. At this point you can 1) leave it for a while, stretch and relax, eat and chat, or 2) you can haunt the dye, monitoring its progress and aiming for the perfect shade.

When the egg is a nice shade, you begin to draw the parts of the design that are meant to stay that color. Hunching over the egg as you work is mandatory.

ta da! Now on to the next color, and repeat. 

I only used three colors on this egg (white, blue, purple) so there was no more wax to put on. Just so you know, when the dyes are this weak, barely taking to the egg at all, you need to buy new dyes! These ones are probably three + years old, so it is time. Look back at the vibrancy of the colors in the top picture. Those were fresh dyes.

The next part is most amazing step of the process. You hold the egg close to the candle, so that a small area of wax melts. You quickly wipe it away. After working to plan and make your design, after holding the egg for hours, covered in black and grey lines, watching it get darker and darker with each added dye, you suddenly see a burst of color! (more so when you use more colors and stronger dyes... ahem)

You smile,

are amazed at seeing it all,

and then remember that you have the whole egg full of them, waiting to be revealed.

Either before or after you take the wax off, you have to get the yolk and egg white out. We like to leave wax at least around the hole because the egg white can bleach the dye.

My mom remembers that when she made these as a girl scout, long long ago, they simply let the whites and yolk dry up and harden. When she recently found the egg at my grandparents' house, you could shake it and hear the yolk rattle around.

But we take it out. So you drill a small hole in one end, and then use a special pump to push air into the egg, pushing the whites and yolk out. Often, they have absorbed some of the dye and are brilliant blue or green!



(old picture)

 Then you pump water into the egg, swish it around, and pump it out. We leave the eggs to dry on a stand for a few days, since they can still drip for a while. That just gives everyone time to admire them a little :)

And this is where there should be a big bang finish... but I can't think of one... :-D

Think of me as I'm up all night, studying 206 bones and their many protrusions, 80 muscles with their actions, attatchment points and visible locations, about 15 types of joints with their example locations aaaand more for my FINAL PRACTICAL EXAM of the semester! Real finals next week.