: : Meet Me at Mikes : : My Place and Yours - 'My Collection' (or in this case, Someone Else's Collection)

my friend julie texted me while i was camping just to tell me that the theme over at the Meet Me at Mikes meme this week is My Collections! she was so excited about Kate of Foxs Lane's theme choice that she thought i ought to know about it right away. . .

luckily she decided i needed to know, because right after feeling like it was a fantastic theme i realized i have no collections of anything whatsoever.

sorry kate, for adapting your theme slightly in order to have something to post about! after some thought i decided to write about a collection of my parents that still fascinates me to this day - Pysanky, or Ukranian Easter Eggs.

each year around Easter my mum would get out the Ukrainian Easter eggs, kept carefully swaddled in storage and put them in bowls around the living room and on the dining room table. this process (and general handling of the eggs) was always delicate as the eggs are generally kept intact. almost all of them still had their 'insides' and i recall one year one breaking and spreading its super-noxious-sulfur-smell around the house for days. i've noticed in all the images i found today the insides have been 'blown' out of the eggs. good idea i think.

aren't they incredible to look at? the colours and motifs are amazing and excellent fodder for inspiration and general marveling. i think also the shape of an egg and the idea of what an egg represents adds to the appeal on the whole. Luba Petrusha (United States) was kind enough to let me use some images from her incredible website devoted to all things Pysanky, including tutorials, galleries, symbolism, and indexes of all the different types of designs and their regions.

ok wow, now i really want my very own gigantic collection of pysanky! and don't you just really want to do some serious wax resist of your own this easter? and then keep them stored stacked by the dozens as see above?




all images are from Luba Petrusha's site, Pysanka.

thanks for having a peep at my place and letting me have a look at yours!