I create many dozens of pysanky each year.  Most of them, in recent years, have been recreations of traditional patterns, and original designs–either brown egg pysanky (a favorite of mine), snowflake eggs, or, most recently, goose egg pysanky.

The month or two before Easter, however, I create six to eight dozen pysanky meant to be gifts.  I give one to each female relative, at out Easter get-together, and one each to all of my nieces and nephews.  The former get to choose from the designs I’ve written that year; the latter usually receive pysanky specifically written for them, with their names and the year incorporated into the design. Friends receive pysanky either at Easter, or when I visit them during the year. 

When I do write these pysanky, I make all sorts.  My family prefer intricate, diasporan designs, so I have usually made mostly those.  I recreate patterns from books and postcards, for the most part, and sometimes designs culled from the internet.  In the past few years I have been writing more and more traditional pysanky, albeit more intricate and colorful ones, in addition to the diasporan ones.

When I make these annual pysanky, I usually make from two to six to twelve at a time of the patterns I have chosen. Some turn out nicely, others are flops. I find that as I write more of any given design, I not only make fewer mistakes on each egg, but I also write them much more quickly. Some eggs, though, are one-of-a-kind, either done just for the joy of it, to test new colors and techniques, or just to figure out how they are done.  I try to keep one copy of each series for my own collection, but it doesn’t always work out that way....

I’ve included photos of all these pysanky on the following pages, and gathered those pages into a “Gallery.”  They are organized by year, and the provenance of the design, when known, is included. (An explanation of the codes can be found here.) 

The “Pre-2004” pysanky are a bit different from the other sets.  They are what remain in my possession of the modern pysanky I made in recent years. (You can find many others from that period in the Pysanka Galleries section, particularly Baba’s and Laurie’s collections.) They are almost all made utilizing the newest technologies (electric styluses, aniline dyes, and a Blas-Fix).

And the “Old Pysanky” are just that: a couple of egg cartons of pysanky from the 70s to 90s, some written with old technology, and all the eggs dried out and not emptied (i.e. made before I discovered the joy of not having  pysanky leak and explode unexpectedly). The eggs are a mixed lot, with some traditional types mixed in.

The pysanky shown in this section do not include my traditional, sorokoklyn, and Trypillian eggs. Most of the brown egg pysanky I’ve created since Easter of 2007 are in their own section as well.

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