With all this talk of Easter and eggs starting to swirl around the blogging community, I thought I'd bring up a really fantastic alternative to Paas. Even as a kid, I thought the standard egg dye colors you could get in your grocery store were pretty boring. And don't even get me started on the whole glitter, tie-dye, sticker options. In middle school, however, my friend Laura introduced me to a whole new world of egg dying: pysanky.
Pysanky is a traditional handicraft, originating in the Ukraine, that involves using hot wax and intensely-colored dyes to create intricate patterns on Easter eggs. The word pysanky literally means "to write," and the tool you use to apply the wax is essentially a heated fountain pen (either electric, or held over a candle) that you fill by dipping the nib into a chunk of tinted wax. You can do single colored eggs, like the one I made at left, or get as intricate as your heart desires. The traditional designs are rich with symbolism, too, and you can lose yourself in the patterns alone.
The best part of pysanky, though, is the colors! You can get deep, intensely pigmented dyes in all sorts of non-traditional colors like dark blue, brick, scarlet, and even black.
Traditionally, eggs are dyed while still raw and then left to dry out. Eggs are porous, so if an egg is left undisturbed for long enough, the insides will just dry up and form a little ball inside that rattles. The key word here is undisturbed - I tried this with my first dozen or so eggs, with absolutely disastrous results. (Think egg explosion with 1.5-year-old rotten eggs covering the dining room from floor to ceiling. NOT fun.) After that I invested in an egg blower. You can also hard boil the eggs, and while the dyes are non-toxic, you shouldn't eat the eggs after dying them.
Even if you don't use the pysanky writing tool - called a kistka - the colors available in the dyes blow any wimpy Paas kit right out of the water. Here are a few spots to find them:
HearthSong
Yevshan Ukrainian Store
The Caning Shop
A brief flickr search reveals TONS of amazing eggs online! I seem to be attracted to mostly red ones. This apple didn't fall far from the tree, apparently. :)
The woman who made most of these also has a really nice photoset/tutorial on the whole pysanky process.
Oh, that brown and teal egg is just fabulous!!
Oh yes, please do not use raw eggs.
*shudder*
~the tree