Flashback Friday
My flashback topic for today came up in my Timehop app after I had decided I’d share about it. Apparently this picture was taken five years ago today. Given that it’s Easter on Sunday, I thought I’d share my grandpa’s special method for dying eggs. He used the ordinary Paas dye kits like we used, except he didn’t make a dye bath with the tablets and dunk his eggs like we did. Instead, with his method, his eggs came out as a much more colorful masterpiece. Almost abstract in a way. Five years ago I showed Josh how it was done.
I can still remember dyeing eggs as a kid. I can see grandpa sitting at the dining room table with all of my mom’s teacups spread out around the table. That was the only time of the year those teacups were used, to dye eggs. While I knelt in a chair and leaned over the table carefully dunking eggs into the cups and fishing them back out, grandpa sat with a warm, wet dishcloth in front of him.
Instead of dissolving the dye tabs into a solution of vinegar and water, grandpa crushed the tabs into little pieces. Then he took various pieces and put them into the dishcloth that was damp with hot water. He put an egg in the middle of the cloth and then wrapped the cloth around the egg and rubbed it. As he rubbed, he made sure he was rubbing the dye tablets into the egg at the same time. Almost like he was polishing the egg with the tablet chunks. The result made the egg look like a 3D canvas for a beautiful painting. Somewhere there exists a picture of this very egg dyeing scene with my grandpa. But in the absence of the original picture, I have my own recreation.
Josh bought a Paas egg dyeing kit last week. Either we’ll get around to dyeing eggs for Easter—and “accidentally” cracking one or two in the dyeing process so that whatever we make with the eggs afterwards (deviled eggs, potato salad, etc.) will have a few colored pieces to it. It was part of the Easter tradition growing up. Dyeing eggs and then eating blue potato salad (it wasn’t all blue, just in a few places). So we’ll either dye eggs or I’ll add the colored tablets to my collection for the next time that I dye yarn.
This is yarn that I dyed for knitting camp one year when it was held in Syracuse. Dyed with all the orange dye tablets from Easter egg kits I had bought at clearance sales after Easter the year before (and a little bit of food coloring and kool aid thrown in for extra vibrancy).
If you happen to be dyeing eggs this weekend, give my grandpa’s method a try. I guarantee no two eggs will come out the same.
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