Pisanki

Friend Marge and I took a class in decorating Pisanki eggs this morning.  These are the intricately designed eggs we see at Easter, most commonly in the multi-colored Ukranian tradition. The Ukranian eggs are usually done with hollowed out eggs  because the dye they use renders the egg inedible.  These were done in the Polish way with natural dyes and simpler designs.  The tradition in Poland is to make the eggs as an Easter offering to members of a family after they were blessed at the Holy Saturday blessing of food.  Families had their own designs, names were etched on, motifs meant different things.

For a stylus a pin is stuck into the eraser of a pencil.  The larger the head of the pin the better.  We were told that it's getting hard to find large headed pins so if you are cleaning out a grandmother's sewing basket, look for large headed pins!  Like wooden spools, they're a thing of the past.

 Dip the end of the pin into hot wax and make your design swipe on your egg. Dip, swipe, dip, swipe. One dip per swipe.  The wax dries fast on the head of that pin and the smaller headed pins don't hold a lot of wax.

 After the design is complete the egg is dipped into the dye.

This one was really pretty.  She started with a brown egg and put it into yellow dye, but the design was so pretty!  I commented on it and the woman said the egg was cracked and she just followed the cracks with her wax and then added a dot here and there. Doesn't it look like a tree coming into bud? I'd love a piece of fabric that looked like this and was this color!

 Then they are put on racks to dry.  You can see these are anything but professional.  This looks a lot easier than it is, folks!

 When the dye is dry the wax is scraped off with a knife

 Some were very vibrant because they were left to sit in the dye a long time.  There were 28 people in this workshop so keeping a vat of color a long time wouldn't be friendly. Most people didn't do it and it was fun to see the vibrant colors.

 There was one woman who came with some brown eggs and it really made her colors look antiqued.  There is so much possibility if you have the time, talent or inclination to do this.  Marge and I each took some hollowed out eggs to color so they wouldn't have to be eaten.  I taught Elizabeth and Adelaide how to blow out the eggs.

 There's one in every crowd, isn't there?  This gentleman did quite a scene on his egg.  The yellow parts are the wax.  That's a scene with earth, landscape, sky, stars and the moon. Once he scraped off his wax it was truly amazing. He did just two eggs in the two hours we were there but such patience and forethought!  I told Marge it was enough to make us want to pack up our stuff and go home.