Pysanki. Say "pea-sunk-ee" for several. Pysanka for one. Also known as Ukrainian Easter eggs.I've always been a sucker for craft stuff, the more difficult and messy, the better. This one hits 'em all - bowls full of permanent dyes, fragile eggs, a writing instrument that involves heated beeswax and candles, and incredibly complicated instructions.
This is one of the riskier things I've done.
There are four plastic containers of permanent dyes upstairs: the all-important black, yellow, red, and orange. The dye came in tiny wee packets and had to be mixed up using boiling hot water and a teaspoon of white vinegar.
I'm just waiting for one of the cats to go crashing into the cardboard box holding these things on the kitchen counter.
Right now, my hands are smeared with black, yellow, red, and orange dye. Did I mention this is permanent?
I have always gone weak in the knees for this beautiful folk art.
I managed to do very well with wycinanki, Polish papercutting, and one year when very poor, gave everyone a mounted paper cutting. It made me sad when Annushka's husband, Ralph, banished something very much like this from its place of honor in the dining room. (If she doesn't want it, I wish she'd give it back, because I liked it.)Why I can't take up knitting or something reasonable like that, I don't know. Well, yes, I do. Nice yarn is outrageously expensive and I'd probably do better buying a sweater than making one. My attempts at fancy embroidery have come to naught. And I just don't want to talk about sewing. Besides, I find it unsettlingly difficult to thread and use a needle these days.
Pysanki seems like a cheap hobby. The dyes go for maybe fifty cents a packet. The special beeswax you use to mark the eggs is two bits for a chunky block of it. And everybody has eggs.
There's a different mindset to it, though, an assembly-line quality to it that I know will be a challenge.
We'll see.
