They Gave Their All For A Few Good Hens ...

I found a cool new trick on several other blogs and websites this Easter ... using silk to dye eggs ... specifically, Shawn's old ties.


Regrettably, my camera was not the best at capturing how cool these turned out. (I admit, it could have been user error - I was SO excited when we unwrapped these.). So I've included links to other bloggers (Scribbit -- thanks!! and Martha) with better camera skills than mine.

They were really fairly easy. But the best part, relatively no mess and only a little reliance on vinegar (which I swear always disappears or runs out the week before Easter). The trick it wrapping the eggs with the silk pieces, securing them on the eggs, and boiling the whole thing all together.* Some of the recipies also suggested wrapping the individual eggs in an old sheet, muslin, etc ... eck -- too much more work. And it worked fine without. Perhaps if you're doing a lot of varied colors and they were delicate you might get a little bleed through. So wrap or not at your own risk!!

Let them cool, unwrap, and express glee in your craftiness & success. In the spirit of full disclosure, we did four different colors of silk ties, some more elaborate than others. Three of the four turned out spectacular. The light yellow with blue polka dots was almost non-existent. I read all kinds of reasons why this might not have occured, but I was pleased with our overall success ratio so I chose not to get all hung up on it. The instructions suggested I could have tried again -- but I wanted to eat these eggs afterwards. And the idea of boiling and reboiling an egg conjured up notions of turning it into a Superball instead.

Also in the spirit of full disclosure, there were a handful of references about some of the dyes used in ties in the silk being potentially harmful for consumption. But the references were mixed. And frankly given the amount of diet coke I consume on a daily basis, the amount of time I've spent near a microwave, and the amount of air / rail / road travel in a year vs the amount of silk dyed eggs - I'm thinking it's not much of a worry.

* Typically, the method we follow to boil eggs involves very little boiling per se. In fact, once the water comes at all to a simmer, we take the pot off the heat for a period of time. It allows the eggs to cook through without letting the yolk become all rubbery. Given it was Saturday night, we didn't experiment to see if this method would work with the eggs -- watch for updates next year.