Fabric Blo-Pen designs stenciled on egg. Lines later painted on using dye thickner and a Jaquard dye.

Small swirls waxed on. Filled the egg with water to dye it, but didn't add enough water so it floated. Took advantage of the float by dying the tip in teal, then inverting the egg and dying it dark green for a few minutes. Wax removed.

Fuschia egg, probably dyed with the cool German sheet dyes

Waxed . . . .

Egg painted with Setacolor inside the waxed area, then dyed dark gray for a few minutes. Wax removed.

Yellow egg. Blue lines added using thinkened dy-na-flow. Pattern waxed on top.

After being dyed Dylon Tahitian Rose.

Wax dribbled onto the egg

Dyed slate blue.

Pink egg, waxed.

Dipped in vinegar for a while, and gently scrubbed to remove some of the color. Notice I wasn't horribly successful -- a quarter-sized area of wax was removed, too.

A few spots of yellow Versatex added

Decided to go with a tan color.

Didn't really like the color so I brushed a little watered-down Versatex purple on it.

OK, it looks like a light blue egg with the dye removed, then a bad yellow dye job

Wax removed and more wax applied; just prior to a black dye bath.

Wax removed again. Feels like we're verging on interesting.

Wow. I didn't think anything could save this, but look what half an hour and a bunch of gold rubber-stamp embossing powder can do.

Fuschia egg

Waxed . . . later the waxy area was covered with purple dy-na-flow and the wax removed. The dy-na-flow border was too harsh.

Fantastic softens the look.

Resist #1

I found an old batik kit in my studio, complete with a resist. I tried it out, and as expected it was something of a failure. The resist dissolves while sitting in the dye bath, which really limits its use in my work. If I'm using a quick-acting dye it might be fun -- I can lay on a thick coat of the resist, and let it dissolve into a gradient. Maybe.

Also found some dye thickener I forgot I had purchased. I used it with Jacquard Textile Colors and Dy-Na-Flow. Not bad. The colors retain their transparency, which is super-important to me.

Back in the Saddle

Just ordered a bunch of stuff from Dharma -- three resists, some Versatex ink, some Jacquard colors, and new tjantings. I know someone, somewhere makes a resist especially for pysanky, but I can't find the vendor so I'm going to try the resists Dharma stocks. It's a tricky problem -- most resists are designed to wash out with water, which means they aren't usable in a dye bath. My eggs almost always start in a dye bath, so I have to be very careful here.

One option is to move away from dye baths, but the dyes are a big part of the random-ness that infects my work. Rit dyes were never designed for this kind of work, and I'm always getting strange results. I like all the odd color spotting, the uneven coverage, and all the other strange things that can happen. Some of the dyes are a decade old, and I'm sure the age contributes to the issues.

I keep saying one day I'll move to a nice set of fiber-reactive dyes, but the expense is holding me back. I don't know why -- I just bought a bunch of stuff that I'm not even sure will work, nad here I am nitpicking over an essential supply. The color palette I get from Rit is a little . . . . uninspired at times. They are selling colors to Wal-Mart consumers, after all, so they tend to be a little conservative. I'd love to have a larger palette to choose from.

Every year someone writes me asking where they can get a Dudley Egg Spinner. I'm announcing here, publicly, that I have seen them in Kroger's this season. Target also looks like they have some fun grown-up type egg kits. The itty-bitty picture makes it look like they come with a Bas-Flix Egg Blower. If so they'll be worth the cost of the kits. A Bas-Flix plus shipping is about $10, which is also the cost of Target's new kits.