Thing-a-day.com

We got another layer of powdery snow today, which seems a fitting end to this much-too-snowy month. I’m really looking forward to seeing some green outside soon. Tonight I started on a green pysanky egg with a leaf design to help me think of spring and warm weather. Maybe it’s a good sign that I’m posting an unfinished thing with my last post. I plan to keep working on the egg tomorrow, and perhaps that will help me continue this pattern of doing stuff. I’ve really enjoyed this past month, especially seeing all the cool things that other people did. Thanks everyone!

We had guests over tonight, so afterwards I was in a rush to finish my pysanky duck egg. The first colors (yellow, apricot, orange, red) went well, although the egg seemed to be having a seepage problem. Tiny droplets of water started bubbling out of the egg at random spots on the shell because I hadn’t sealed the egg hole tightly enough with wax. I tried to deal with this problem by putting the egg in the freezer before dying it. Then I tried to dye the egg magenta. The color did not take very well over the red. Same with dark red. In fact, the dark red dye turned the egg a nasty blotchy shade of brown. It didn’t look good and the color would not wash off completely with Ivory soap. I decided to soak the egg briefly in vinegar to etch the shell and return it to white. After that, I attempted to dye the egg turquoise and royal blue, but these dyes took very unevenly. The water inside the eggshell kept bubbling out through the shell and formed interesting, splotchy patterns on the shell. I kind of like the splotchy look of the blue areas, although it wasn’t intentional.

Today I decided to make another abstract egg pysanky, similar in design to the modern egg that I messed up earlier this month. On this duck egg, I’m going to use mostly warm colors — lemon yellow, apricot gold (the current color), and then orange, red, magenta, etc. I’ve only dyed and waxed two colors so far, but it is a fairly simple block design and hopefully I can finish it by tomorrow. The challenging thing for me is to get the wax lines really straight and even.

One of the great things about having kids is that you can dress them however you want for the first couple years. That is, until they hit about 3 1/2 and figure out that weird hats and leg warmers are not a fashion choice that they will submit to graciously. The solution? Yes, you got it. Have another child! Which brings in my thing-a-day for today. I’ve been enjoying cignoh’s recent posts about reconstructing old clothing. So tonight, not having another project in mind, I looked in my closet for things I wasn’t wearing anymore. The first thing I found was a brand new pair of striped toe socks that I’ve never worn (because I found that my toes dislike being confined). I cut off the toes and hemmed the rough edges to give them a more finished look. They will now be a pair of baby leg warmers for my 14 month old daughter. Sucker.

Today I finally finished the large goose egg pysanky that I’ve been working on for the past two days. It’s really colorful and it gave me a chance to use some of the dyes I hadn’t yet tried. The chipped wax lines around the red shapes still show slightly in the final egg as faint white outlines. My husband thinks I should use a fine paintbrush and apply some red dye on these lines… it might be an experiment to try tomorrow.

I made some more progress on the red goose egg pysanky started yesterday. I drew a purple sawtooth border and filled in half of the curved shapes with color. Unfortunately when I was cleaning and scrubbing the egg after the purple dye (to return it to white), some of the wax lines started to chip at the edges. I’m not sure exactly why this happened. This goose egg is slightly rough in texture, so the wax may not be adhering as well in some places. Or maybe I just scrubbed too much. I decided to re-dye the egg red and draw those lines again. The chipped lines may still show in the finished egg, but hopefully not too much.

Today I started working on my first goose egg pysanky. So far I’ve drawn a curved design in wax on the egg, which was initially dyed red/rubine. The curved design is repeated around the egg four times. I then outlined the curved shapes (after dying the egg in dark red) and then I dyed the egg magenta (producing a mauve-purple color). Tomorrow I will finish filling in the curved shapes and background with other colors. This goose egg is quite a bit larger than a standard chicken egg (pictured in the background of the photo).

Before I started making pysanky with velvety smooth duck eggs, I was using standard chicken eggs from the grocery store. The duck eggs are far nicer to work with, and as a result I still have several chicken eggs sitting on my kitchen counter from I don’t know when. They are probably at least 6 weeks old and have not yet been emptied out. My husband is a little concerned that some of them may eventually explode (”spraying salmonella particles all over our kitchen” in his words).

Basically I need to start using the chicken eggs or throw them away. I hate to waste a perfectly good egg so today I practiced making a basic geometric pattern on a chicken egg. The egg was dyed pale pink, turquoise, royal blue, then rubine (red). I think the design came out okay, although the color combination is not my favorite.

Today I finally got around to finishing an overdue birthday present for my grandma (88 years old). The present is a small pink photo album with far too many photos of my kids. I made her a similar photo album last summer and she liked it a lot and still carries it everywhere. Hopefully she will like this one too!

Argh. My latest modern pysanky egg was going really well until I made the mistake of trying to apply one last color (red). Red wasn’t in the dying sequence that I was using (lime-green to turquoise to blue to black), so it was necessary to wash and gently scrub the areas where I wanted to put the red dye. Unfortunately, some of the dyed areas that appeared to be safely protected under a layer of wax, started coming off. They literally flaked off when I was scrubbing the egg with the plastic brush. This has never happened to me before. I think the cuticle of the egg was coming loose in those areas because the egg had been dyed several times. The egg probably would have been fine if I hadn’t scrubbed it. At least the basic design of the egg came out okay, even though it looks yucky in the flaked-off areas. I plan to make a similar version of this design on a larger goose egg.

For my latest egg, I wanted to do something different involving larger areas of color. I found an image of an abstract painting by the artist Jay McVicker and attempted to create an egg in a similar (though not identical) style. I drew guidelines on the egg with watercolor pencil and filled in some of the areas with wax. The colors I’ve used so far are lime green, apple green, green-blue, and dark turquoise blue. I hope to finish the egg tomorrow and post the results.

Today I finished applying the wax on the lime green egg that I started yesterday. The pattern was an abstract basket-weave pattern with some variations. It was a good project to practice with the electric kistky. A lot of my wax lines were not exactly straight (and impossible to correct once drawn), but the mistakes and wonky lines mostly blend into the overall design. After I completed the wax application over the lime green egg, I dyed the remaining unwaxed parts turquoise. Then I removed the wax in the oven. It was satisfying to be able to finish an egg in only 2 days.

I had a long day today. Bad things just kept happening (first I fell on the ice while carrying our daughter, then our kitchen sink faucet broke, the replacement faucet was broken, the second replacement faucet was also broken, our daughter fell inside and busted her lip, we broke one of our favorite bowls…etc). ugh. I wasn’t feeling inspired so I just started drawing a linear design on my latest duck egg. It looks a little like basket-weaving. Tomorrow I hope to finish the main wax design and add more colors.

Today I needle-felted some more felt pieces and yarn to the front of the felted sweater piece from yesterday. Then I hand-sewed the shoulders to the back sweater piece, and sewed up the sides by machine. The plan was to reconstruct this into a jumper dress for my daughter (a toddler), but I wasn’t really happy with the shape. The shoulders needed to be cut down and reshaped to fit her. I wasn’t sure that I could do this neatly, so I decided instead to sew the sweater back together with the original arms. I would have liked to substitute other more interesting felted arm pieces, but I only have a small stash of felted sweaters and none of them looked right. Basically I just reconstructed the sweater in a smaller size. Hopefully it will fit her next winter.

Today I happened upon one of the pieces of a felted sweater project that I started awhile ago. This happens a lot in our house. I’m so enthusiastic to start new projects and then something happens and the project is put on hold until I find it some days/months/years later. Somehow this felted piece ended up in our clean laundry basket so I found it and started thinking about using it. It was once the front of a small cashmere sweater (from Value Village) that I felted in the washing machine. The material is really soft, thick and warm. It seems like it would make a cute jumper dress for my daughter, if it was sewn together with the matching back piece. I decided to needle-felt some heart & flower designs on the front. I didn’t have time to finish the needle-felting tonight, but will post the result tomorrow.

Today I finished the paisley duck egg that I started two days ago. It has numerous shades of pink, red, and purple, some of which were obtained by dying one color over another (for example, scarlet on top of bengal rose). The background is a dark bluish-violet shade. I really enjoyed making this egg and tried to make each of the 4 paisley shapes distinctive.

More progress on the red paisley duck egg today. I finished waxing the main lines of design in red, and dyed and waxed parts of the egg pale pink and magenta. After waxing in the magenta areas, I scrubbed the exterior with a gentle brush using Ivory liquid soap (a gentle cleaner, not detergent-based) and returned it to white. My husband thinks I should leave it white, but I want to add at least two more shades of red and pink/purple before removing the wax. Tomorrow I’ll post the finished egg.

Today I started working on a paisley patterned duck egg which will be in red and pink tones. I’m drawing the paisley design mostly freehand. Curved designs like this one are a bit more challenging for me to draw in wax than straight-line designs like yesterday’s egg. Hopefully by tomorrow I can get the primary part of the design waxed and can start dying the egg more colors.

I finally finished dying and waxing my first duck egg today! It was exciting to see how the colors and design turned out, since I hadn’t really planned it out beforehand. The design reminds me rather too much of Mardi Gras beads, but it’s still nicer than the other eggs I’ve made so far. I had a minor issue emptying out the sand which I had used to fill the egg. The purpose of the sand was to weigh the egg down so it would sink in the dye baths, instead of floating on the surface of the dye. Many experienced pysanky artists say not to use sand, and this is why. Moisture from the dye seeps in through the natural pores in the eggshell. This causes the sand to clump inside the shell, making it very difficult to remove. I tried shaking the sand out of the egg and digging it out with a tiny pick, but to no avail. Eventually I rewaxed the bottom of the egg (to protect the dyed areas from stray water droplets) and used the Blas-fix blower to squirt water inside the egg and clean it out. Okay, no more sand. I get it now.

Today I worked more on my turquoise duck egg from yesterday. I decided to fill the entire egg with a geometric triangle pattern, and because of the amount of detail involved, it is taking me a long time to finish the initial wax application. The egg will have more colors eventually, maybe even by tomorrow.