Tis the season to get crafty

The last few years, I've found myself slipping further and further into the habit of busting out the kistka and beeswax during Great Lent. Ukies will know whereof I speak: the dreaded pysanka, once a pagan symbol of spring, now an indication that the giver may be a wee bit OCD. When my father taught me the basics, when I was a kid, I remember finding it intensely frustrating: getting the kistka to produce an even flow of wax seemed impossible, and drawing a straight line on a curved surface was more than I could manage. The box of supplies--block of beeswax, cluster of copper-funneled styluses, baggie full of dye packets--ended up gathering dust in the basement workshop.

But a few years ago, a friend from church gave me a pysanka that she had made. It wasn't too elaborate, and it wasn't perfect, but it was beautiful, and that gave me the confidence to try what I had given up on as an eleven-year-old. The basics are easy enough: apply wax design, dip egg in dye, apply further design, dip egg in darker dye, n + 1 until stop, and then melt off the wax, revealing the colors that had been covered by the wax.

The first year's crop were not a tremendous success, not least because I believed the books that said that you could leave the innards of the egg intact. Now, DC is a long way from Ukaine, geography- and climate-wise, and maybe that's the reason, but every single one of that year's pysanky cracked and oozed about three months past their maximum use date. We're not even talking the standard rotten egg smell of sulfur; we're talking closer to putrescine a la squirrel mort. Not promising.

But the next year, my friend gave me an egg pump and some other supplies, and now I make pysanky every year. I'm not a purist, by any means: I use aniline dyes and MinWax laquer, I do empty the eggs (according to the books, an empty egg portends infertility, but anecdotal data suggest that vacant pysanky are no substitute for birth control), and the ancient Ukies probably didn't include sushi or kiwi birds in their original designs. Mother goddesses, yes; spicy tuna rolls, no. Let's file that one under "living tradition" and say no more about it.

The real problem is that the damn things are addictive. Last year I hit a low point, having decided not to watch TV during the fast, and made waaaay too many eggs. The goal this year is not to have so many that I'm embarrassed by it. So far, so good.

In completely other news, best of luck to La Seester at her first roller derby bout tomorrow! Let's hope that the roads are clear and that Marzipain is no match for Scarzipan. Go Nightmares!