This year I went to Fred Meyer completely intending to just get some egg dye and call it good for an evening of ovoid dunking.  When I got there, however, I was presented with a startling array of options.  The one that piqued my interest was the tie dye kit, and so the purchase was made.  I got it home and settled in for an afternoon of egg coloring with the iBoo.  It went okay.  The gist of it is that you take each of your egg dye tablets and combine them with 3 tablespoons of white vinegar instead of some combination of vinegar and water, and then you drool this concentrated dye stuff onto your eggs.

If you follow the instructions on the box, it goes like this:

1. Get out their little egg press thingy
2. Poke holes in said egg press
3. Line the egg press with damp cloth
4. Place the egg gently upon the dampened cloth and close the egg press
5. Mutter curses under your breath as you try to get the stupid thing to stay closed.
6. Use a tiny pipette to suck up concentrated dye and inject it through the little holes you poked in the egg press.
7. Let the egg sit for 5 minutes and then free your newly decorated egg from the contraption.

The results were pretty nice, but I had 18 eggs to get through, and even assuming that the pursing and pipetting steps took zero time, we were looking at about an hour and a half of egg dyeing.

Clearly a different approach was in order.  I went up and raided my husband’s drawers for an unloved t-shirt and devised a different approach.  It went something like this:

1. Cut the T-shirt into approximately 7″ squares
2. Wrap each egg into its own little t-shirt square, securing the ends with a rubber band.
3. Drop the little egg comets into a pot of cool water.
4. Line the egg crate with plastic wrap.  I found that two strips of plastic wrap, each covering a swath of 6 eggs worked better than one long strip of plastic wrap. (this step is not necessary for Styrofoam egg crates)
5. Place the eggs comet tails down into the plastic lined egg crate.  I found that it worked best if you put an egg into the center of the plastic wrap and then work your way out from there
6. Drool concentrated egg dye onto your egg comets.  I mostly abandoned the pipette at this point and used a syringe I had for infant Tylenol. There was a little more potential for uncontrolled dye spurting, but it was much easier to suck up the dye in the first place, discard any unused dye, and clean the syringe before moving on to the next color.
7. Once we had all of the eggs hosed down with dye, we put the eggs into the fridge to wait for the Easter Bunny to unwrap them and reveal the artistic results

When the Easter Bunny unwrapped the eggs, she found the results to be not too shabby .  the one I’m pointing to is the one that I did in The Contraption.  It’s marginally better, but not enough better to warrant the extra time.  I think this is worth doing again.  I think that next time, though, I’ll try to get some muslin to cut into squares.  I think hat if I’d used fabric that absorbed less of the dye, the colors might have turned out a little more vibrant.  On the whole, I’m pretty pleased with this year’s results, though.  I think you could do this with any package of egg dye tablets, just use 3T of white vinegar rather than whatever the instructions actually call for.

Happy Easter, y’all!