Beginning Pysanky

I have the pleasure of teaching other people the art of pysankarstvo -- "writing" Easter eggs.

I have created a handout for the class, with the intention that it be thorough enough to follow without needing me to be present. I hope that is so!

If you choose to varnish your egg(s), DON'T wear gloves. I know this sounds odd, but the process really works better without. Set up a place for varnished eggs to dry (skewers set in Styrofoam work quite nicely). Pour a small quantity of varnish into one hand, and then rub it over the eggshell. When you have covered the shell, slide it over a skewer to dry. Once you have varnished as many shells as you want to, pour some cooking oil on your hands and rub them together to release the varnish. You can then wash your hands normally. You can add more coats of varnish once the first dries, if you so desire.

Words for Elena the Blue

These are words for the Order of the Pine, the service order of the Barony of Concordia of the Snows. The recipient is Elena the Blue, who is the baronial chronicler, has autocratted Coronation, can routinely be found helping in feast kitchens, and has been SUPER involved in promoting and supporting archery. 

Her persona is early Norse, and her heraldry is an owl in flight on two arrows, crossed. I aimed for something with the general flavor of the Havamál, and slipped in kennings where I could.

Given at Bjorn's Ceilidh, Nov. 15, 2020

Arrow-swift, owl-wise, comes Elena the Blue

Unstinting is she in her service

To snow-limned Concordia

Formidable is she in in guarding the Barony

Training and supporting its sylvan defenders

Mindful that knowledge unites those parted

Does she labor to chronicle the snow-land’s deeds

Her words fly even through the aether

To bind us all one to another

Nor is she behindhand in hospitality.

She labors to feed hungry guests at many a feast

And also to host our mighty royalty

No service too great, and none too small

She sets her hand to labor at any need.

Thus are we, Faolán an Sccreccain and Maria Erika von Ossenheim,

Baron and Baroness of these drift-bound forests,

Minded to admit her to our baronial Order of the Pine

That all may know we have seen her labors

And desire to honor her.

Done this day ….

Apron dress pattern

I wear a lot of apron dresses. I make even more of them, for others to wear as well. The image below is a handout image I made for friends who needed a visual -- and needed straight lines, and a minimum of fabric left over.

You can strap this in several ways, of course. I didn't add the straps to the diagram, because it is up to you how you want to do them -- or if you even want to do them from the same material; tablet-woven straps are terrific!

I have one or two, made for reigns when I was retaining and might have to move fast, for which I simply made a strap and sewed it down front and back.

My usual method is a wee loop in front, and a longer loop over the shoulder, aligned so that when the brooches are in place, everything hangs as it should. It may help to have another person on hand to pin and re-pin while you figure out where that sweet spot is.

I invariably take darts along the top edge of mine. Big enough to go around the bust measurement leaves me with a big flopping flappy-thing at the top, if I don't. So I take darts above the breasts, aligned as closely as possible to the vertical seams.

If you use this pattern, let me know how it works for you!

Veil for the elevation of Mistress Eikaterine

Eikaterine is a dear friend and clan-sister, so when the opportunity arose to make the veil for her elevation to the Pelican, I jumped on it!

With a Byzantine persona, she wears fairly large veils. I acquired some bright blue lightweight silk, tiny freshwater pearls, and similarly sized garnets and lobed trade silver beads.

I hand-rolled the hem of the silk. Folding over the edge about 1/4 inch, I secured thread in the fold, passing it through the material, and brought it down to just below the end of the folded portion. I caught a thread or two, then re-pierced the fold, bringing the needle out again about 3/8 inch away, repeating the process until I had several inches of "ladder rungs" across the edge of the veil. Then I pulled tight on the working end to zip the edge together.

It is surprisingly satisfying to hand-roll a hem. Zip!

Once the veil was hemmed, it was time to bead. Securing the thread inside the hem, I began stitching on the beads in the pattern I had chosen (pearl, trade silver, pearl, garnet, repeat), sliding the needle inside the hem between beads, and knotting at intervals to minimize damage in case of future accidents. Beading went rather quicker than hemming.

I had to go back and get finer beading needles; the first ones would NOT go through the pearls, at all. All beads are in the 2mm range, and the pearls had the smallest holes.

Though they were tiny, by the time I had somewhere between 450 and 500 beads attached to the silk, they provided a little weight and a really nice drape. 

As I could not get off work for Bergental/BBM Yule, my husband carried the veil into the ceremony. He had made the chain for the medallion, and walked in the procession beside the person who made the medallion.

Mistress Eikaterine in all her regalia. 

Photo by Jennifer Guyton-Bohlen/Mistress Cateline la Broderesse

Reproduction: The Lviv Pysanka

In August 2013, during excavations in the city of Lviv, Ukraine, workers unearthed a pysanka some 500 years old. That pushed back the age of the oldest surviving egg find considerably; as eggshells are rather fragile, very few survive, and most that have been found have been glass or ceramic reproductions.

The shell in question is believed to be either a goose or a duck egg. Looking at the wax and dye patterns, it appears to have been decorated with a single dip -- areas that were not covered by wax all appear to be the same shade. To date, I have seen no information indicating what the original dye material was. The design itself is a traditional pattern referred to as "Black Sea."

With close to a dozen excited friends sending me links to the find, I just HAD to reproduce it. At the time, I had neither duck nor goose eggs in hand, so I worked with chicken eggs. My tool kit was as usual: a household candle for a heat source, a lump of beeswax to lay down lines, and a traditional kistka, a copper cone wire-wrapped to a small dowel. And for dyestuffs, I decided to try a material that would have been readily available in period.

My first attempt was made with beet juice and macerated beets as the dye, but I added too much vinegar. This gave me a lovely pale pink -- and acid-etched a considerable percentage of the eggshell itself, leaving a fine white film in the bottle of the jar of dye.

 It was pretty ...

... Until it rubbed right off with the wax. But the etched effect WAS kind of nifty.

Time to start over, and pick another readily-available dyestuff.

Fortunately, my local grocery store is used to me. The stockers are all used to seeing me candle eggshells before I buy them. And the late-night clerk didn't bat an eye when I went to the produce section and filled a bag with yellow onion skins -- and no onions.

At home, I crammed as many skins as I could into a small saucepan, with about a cup and a quarter of water. I simmered them until I got a good golden-brown color, then removed the pan from the water, strained it, and let it cool in a wide-mouthed jar. While it cooled, I laid down wax on a new shell. Once the dye was cool, I added about a tablespoon of vinegar and stirred it in. Since I had emptied the shell, I plugged the hole in the bottom, and weighted the shell down with a smaller glass jar, crossed my fingers, and went to bed.

The next morning, I extracted the shell from the dye bath, lit my candle again and removed the wax. This time, it was a success!

Chicken egg and yellow onionskin, left overnight

While the "Black Sea" pattern can be filled in a number of ways, the Lviv shell features fairly large-scale hatch marks through half the space -- a simple fill. The shell took up the dye beautifully, too.