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!  

Trying not to be obvious

The obvious topic for today would be snow.  We got at least another foot last night but it's blowing around so much, you really can't tell how much new snow there is.  And, really, at this point who cares?  And the winds are howling and just WHIPPING the snow around.  I'm not even going to go out and check the mail today, because (1) he probably didn't get here because the roads are so bad, and (2) I may not get back here to the house.  Remember the scene in Laura Ingalls Wilder The Long Winter when they tied a rope from the house to the barn?  It's THAT kind of weather outside.

So, on to warmer thoughts...of Greece.  The main motivator that got me thinking about doing a blog myself was reconnecting with my (second) cousin, Ingabritt, from Sweden.  I spent time with her two different times when I was visiting Sweden in 1978 and 1979.  Here we are sitting on a Dala Horse in a park called Skansen in Stockholm.

Now she has lived in Greece with her family for the last 20 years.  She went to school to be a journalist and is now using that and other experiences to write a travel blog about Greece but written for people back in Sweden.  I think Greece is a popular warm-weather vacation spot for people in Sweden.  Also, her blog is right now in third place out of ten in a travel blog competition.  (It's called Aktuellt i Grekland if you want to vote.)  And, I found out that using Chrome as a browser, it does a pretty good job of translating it for me, or enough so I know that today's topic is what's happening in her town as people are celebrating the days leading up to Karneval or what is Mardi Gras for us. So her blog inspired me, however, she has been doing this for seven years.  And I am only on post #2!

Last thing, we are expecting B&B guests tonight coming up from the south.  They already know the ice caves have been closed until tomorrow morning when rangers will check to see how the ice is under all this snow.  And they know that the roads are bad up here, so think good thoughts for all travelers out today!

Adjö!

P.S.  They all arrived safe and sound!