Asynchronous Easter Report

Easter for two was pleasant enough this year, though a little anti-climactic. Last year’s Easter celebration took place at my mom’s house and coincided with Ingrid’s 5th birthday and my grandfather’s funeral. The whole family was there and my cousins and I had a blast hiding a zillion eggs for the younger crowd. My mom’s yard is the perfect egg-hiding yard: different levels, all sorts of vegetation, a little bit of yard art. This year it was me, the Sneaky Easter Bunny, getting out of bed early to go stash a modest haul for Ingrid in our back yard. (The haul would have bee MUCH more modest if my mom hadn’t sent some wee presents: Zuzu pets.) Ingrid enjoyed it to pieces (see above: Zuzu pets).

One of the biggest hits of the whole event was our egg-dyeing adventure. I read about tie-dying eggs on Wendy Bernard’s blog, Knit and Tonic, and thought it sounded more adventurous than the usual Paas route. Following Wendy’s advice, I went to Salvation Army and bought several all-silk men’s neckties (cost = 25 cents/each). These were then cut open and disemboweled (take out the lining) and made to lie flat. From there on out this is easy as pie.

You cut sections of tie large enough to wrap around your egg. This is surprisingly little tie, really, so one tie is enough for four eggs or so, I would think, with scraps left over to get truly funky with.

Wendy suggests wrapping your tie-wrapped egg up in old t-shirt pieces and securing it all with rubber bands. I opted for the panty-hose route and tied up each little tie-egg bundle in a section of panty-hose.

Ingrid commented that they looked like little pieces of candy. I think she’s right.

These little bundles of joy are then simmered in water with a bit of vinegar for about 25 minutes. The end result is jewel-like eggs that are really too pretty to eat.

Ingrid and I agreed that this was super fun. I loved the patterns we got on the eggs and really appreciated the relatively mess-free nature of it all. No worries about dye spilling all over your kitchen or your kid, no liquid sloppiness at all, really. The very small would have a problem wrapping the eggs up in slippery silk, but Ingrid and I did a teamwork approach and it went rather smoothly.