Pysanky--part 1
So, as a Slovak, Easter is a big production for drac. See evidence below:
We prepare for Easter all year--we save our eggshells. Whenever I have a recipe that doesn’t call for separated eggs, the eggshell gets blown out rather than broken (unless the shell is blemished or too thin to make a good pysanka.) Over the course of last year we managed to save up 26 shells, hoping to make a bonanza of pysanky to celebrate hubby’s baptism. I underestimated how much of a time demand preparing for said sacrament would be, so a lot of the shells will go back into storage for next year’s pysanky.
Here are the tools of pysanky-making: jars for dye and rinse water, packets of non-edible aniline dye, beeswax for the resist, kitsky for applying the wax, a candle for heating the kitska in use, and skewers and plastic containers to dry the eggs on between layers of dye.
(Pysanky derives from a root word that means ‘writing’. )
I don’t make too many designs that the girls and I didn’t come up with, but the pysanky how-to book in the background shows the dye order really well. Basically, you build a design beginning with the lightest colors and ending with the darkest, protecting each layer of the design with wax as you go. If you’re familiar with batik, shibori, or silk screening, it’s pretty much the same principle.
Applying the first layer of beeswax. Everything under this wax will remain white. Some people like to sketch their designs on the egg in pencil first, but I’ve never been happy with the way the guidelines sometimes show through the finished dye job, so I freehand the whole thing.
Next post: Color!
We prepare for Easter all year--we save our eggshells. Whenever I have a recipe that doesn’t call for separated eggs, the eggshell gets blown out rather than broken (unless the shell is blemished or too thin to make a good pysanka.) Over the course of last year we managed to save up 26 shells, hoping to make a bonanza of pysanky to celebrate hubby’s baptism. I underestimated how much of a time demand preparing for said sacrament would be, so a lot of the shells will go back into storage for next year’s pysanky.
Here are the tools of pysanky-making: jars for dye and rinse water, packets of non-edible aniline dye, beeswax for the resist, kitsky for applying the wax, a candle for heating the kitska in use, and skewers and plastic containers to dry the eggs on between layers of dye.
(Pysanky derives from a root word that means ‘writing’. )
I don’t make too many designs that the girls and I didn’t come up with, but the pysanky how-to book in the background shows the dye order really well. Basically, you build a design beginning with the lightest colors and ending with the darkest, protecting each layer of the design with wax as you go. If you’re familiar with batik, shibori, or silk screening, it’s pretty much the same principle.
Applying the first layer of beeswax. Everything under this wax will remain white. Some people like to sketch their designs on the egg in pencil first, but I’ve never been happy with the way the guidelines sometimes show through the finished dye job, so I freehand the whole thing.
Next post: Color!