A brightly-colored Easter

Just a quick note to post our doings this holiday weekend.

Last night we went wild coloring Easter eggs. Of course we had to try Martha Stewart’s technique of dyeing eggs using patterned silk. We used a 50-cent silk tie we found at a yard sale on Friday.

They came out kinda cool, we thought! To make the egg at the upper left, we used the maroon lining of the tie; the other three were made using the maroon tie fabric itself, which had blue and yellow stripes.

We weren’t sure how well this would work, after reading MaryBT’s CraftFail tale of her attempt that inexplicably yielded utterly white eggs … but fortunately our efforts went smoothly.

Then we dyed a bunch more eggs using a variety Paas dye kits. I’d gotten some crazy ones, including a Marbleized Egg kit and a Tie-Dye egg kit. Frankly, neither of these worked very well. They were fun to play with, but the resulting eggs were oooo-gly. (I’ll spare you the photos.) The best news is that the dyes did not permanently stain the granite countertops.

And once you start coloring things, it’s hard to stop. Here are a couple of shots of our Easter table, ready for our feast this evening.

Isn’t it great when you’ve bought a bunch of crazy random things over the years, and one day they all just come together? And look as if you planned it all along?

For Easter dinner, we’re making the maple-syrup-braised ham from Ruth Reichl’s revised Gourmet cookbook – my idea of a “desert island” cookbook -- plus cheese grits, a tossed salad of spring greens, and oven-baked zucchini and onions Parmesan. (Yeah, that probably sounds like cheesy overkill, but that’s the family’s vote so I’m going with it.)

Then, if we’re not too sick from eating chocolate bunnies and malted milk “robin’s eggs” all day, or maybe even if we are, we’ll have Ghirardelli brownies and peanut-butter ice cream for dessert.

Happy Easter, everyone!

--MaggieBelize
Designer, kNotes for kNitters
Sandia Park, NM