2011年4月5日星期二

Pysanka! | Pantalones del Fuego

One of the benefits of living in the 'dale for the past six months has been reconnecting with old friends, people with whom I went to high school and maybe kept in touch with via social media but hadn't actually seen or spent time with in years before we got here last fall. We've really enjoyed getting to know some of my old friends as adults, and found at least a few kindred spirits. Two of those folks are Karen and Andriy, who live in the house where Karen grew up along with Karen's sister Amy and her son. We've had them over for tasty meals and games, and they've had us over for tasty meals and games, but hadn't seen them in several weeks due to bad weather and general busyness until last weekend. Karen had messaged me on Facebook, asking if I or we would be interested in participating in a traditional Ukrainian Easter craft that she had started doing since not long after she and Andriy, whom she met when he was an exchange student from Ukraine at our high school, began dating.

The craft is called Pysanka, a style of decorating eggs for Easter. The technique involves several layers of dyeing and wax resist/batik to create amazing multicolored designs on the shells of eggs. Traditionally, pysanka is done on raw eggs, but Karen and her family blow the middles to only dye the shells, as they last much longer that way. Karen has been creating pysanky for more than a decade, and she's saved many of the eggs she and her family have created to display in the spring.

Traditional Ukranian bee motif

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