2008
I spent February in India, and, of course, had a cold for a while after returning home. This limited my pre-Easter pysanka making opportunities, but I still made a bunch.
This year’s inspirations were multiple. First of all, there was the cover of the UGS 2008 catalog (UGS C-08). I made a bunch of their new pysanky, changing the colors on a few. I also created a few from Design Book 5 (UGS DB-5)–I’ve been wanting to try the swirling column pattern, and finally figured it out. It was a lot of plotting with pencil, but I finally got it (and made a brown variant as well).
Second, I returned to the classics, re-creating several traditional pysanky from Vira Manko’s book (VM). The photos in the book are quite small, so it is sometimes difficult to get all the details right. Thus, the patterns vary a bit from her traditional designs. (Note: some may be from Elijiw’s book as well. I’m afraid I lost track....)
Third, I’ve been playing around with the Sorokoklyn (40 triangles) division. I made pysanky for all of my nieces and nephews this way, using a single variation of this design but in different (custom) colors. I asked each child their favorite colors, and tried to create a pysanka with that color scheme. Some worked out better than others.
Last, I was still experimenting with brown eggs–these have proved very popular with my female relative and, since they are my target audience, I created several such designs. (Unless noted otherwise, the brown egg designs are my own “doodles.”)
(Most of these designs were created in multiples of three to six. Sometimes there was significant variation within the set as I tried out different approaches to a given design. I’ve included multiple copies of each pysanka for those who might wish to copy the designs for themselves.)
