Cotton-Pickin’ Days

Years ago, my sister learned how to make Ukrainian eggs at school. When we saw how beautiful her eggs were, we all wanted to give it a try.

For several weeks, my father, mother, sister, and I sat around the kitchen table sketching our designs on eggs with #2 pencils. We then dyed the eggs, traced the parts of the pattern that we wanted to keep in that color using beeswax in kistkas, dyed the next darkest color, and traced with wax again, repeating until almost the entire egg was covered with wax. When we were finished, we heated the eggs slightly over a candle flame and rubbed off the melted wax with tissues. When the eggs had dried for a while, we sprayed some varnish to make them shiny. Some of the dozens we made are still sitting in cardboard egg cartons on one of my parents’ shelves.*

Whenever I see pictures of Ukrainian eggs, I still feel warm and fuzzy remembering the time I spent making these intricate pieces of art with the most important people in my life at the time. It ranks as one of my favorite childhood memories.

*We must have looked really strange when buying eggs at the supermarket because we’d examine each one for cracks or other imperfections and swap eggs between cartons. One nosy woman even muttered that we weren’t supposed to be doing that. Guess there are some unwritten egg buying rules that I’m not aware of.

Comments Off