Good Friday & coloring eggs, Greek style

Yesterday my Swedish blogger cousin, Ingabritt, who lives in Greece, blogged about a Maundy Thursday egg-dying tradition she has acquired from her husband's family and the area of Greece where she lives.  It begins with the 50 eggs her mother-in-law delivered to her house. (The number is important when you see what all she did to them.)

Tools needed are the eggs, cleaned if necessary, old pantyhose, wire, scissors, and a bunch of small green leaves that she picked in the park.

Next you need a bunch of outer skins from some onions:

Then you make a little egg package by cutting a piece of the pantyhose, tie up one end with the wire, slip in the egg, slip in a little section of leaves, and wire up the other end of the egg package.  And she did that with 50 eggs!  Sounds like an excellent "being in the moment" activity!

Next put a layer of eggs in a large pot, fill it with water so the eggs are covered, add vinegar (sorry, I don't know how much), add a bunch of onion skins, and boil them for 20 minutes.  And guess what color they will be!!  I was surprised!

Aren't they beautiful?? And look at those delicate little leaves!  I commented on her blog that I had never seen doing it with those leaves, and any of my previous attempts at using natural dyes never turned out this vivid.  She said she had lived in Greece many years before she tried this and now can't imagine doing it with commercial colors.  Now they will each bring an egg with them to church for the Easter Vigil and when the resurrection is proclaimed, partake in the eggs.

I was thinking I wanted to try this.  And then I realized we didn't have any green leaves outside, but Leann said we could use some leaves from our inside plants, perhaps even my Swedish ivy!

Since my girls are older now it's been a few years since I have dyed Easter eggs, but it was always a Good Friday activity in the afternoon after church.  The method used to dye them always changed from year to year--boiling the eggs, blowing the insides out, writing on them with a white crayon revealing words when it's dyed, the feeble attempts at natural dyes, and decorating them with whatever fun stuff came with the egg dyes.  But like making jack-o-lanterns for Halloween, it was always an activity I looked forward to, no matter what age I was.

And that reminded me of some slides I had digitized a while back.  Below you can see me and my Aunt Corrine Swanson in 1962 dying Easter eggs with our Paas egg colors.  And look at the shirt I was wearing - Port Wing!