Friday, April 2, 2010

twitter & tie-dyed eggs

The power of Twitter: A couple weeks ago, I retweeted a link from @DawnSandomeno, a woman I've never met or even, as far as I remember, had any exchange with. The link led to this page

A local friend immediately got excited and began scavenging for silk ties. A few days later, she tweeted out to her crowd an invitation to dinner and egg dyeing.

She received tweets back with offers of salad, dessert, extra eggs.

Tonight we all gathered.

Here are the ties we started with:


We snipped


wrapped


boiled


and took them out to cool


There was so much going on that I didn't even think to take pictures of the kids and teens playing games in the garage or of all the delicious homemade food. Music was playing; conversations were going in every corner of the room. And no party can go wrong with an adorable baby and a sweet black lab:



One picture I really wish I'd had was of us unwrapping the first egg, which came out completely white. We were stunned and decided we must not have added enough vinegar. To the next pot, we were more generous and threw in an extra glug or two.

We got some gorgeous results


but the shells seemed curiously fragile. We were puzzled until someone had an aha! moment. Can you figure it out?

Fun projects are passed across the country and stimulate friends to share an evening together. Twitter: frivolous and narcissistic? Not in my book.

I prefer to think of it as a vibrant community gathering.



13 comments:

  1. You just made my day. What transpired with you and your friends is what motivates me to blog, tweet and post on facebook! Your eggs are beautiful and so is the spirit that comes through in your post.

    Happy Easter,
    Dawn

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  2. I cannot believe I am seeing this post today! I've have that *exact* link in my 'to do' list of things I want to try. It's been sitting there since last year!

    I've got a pile of silk ties, and have been itching to try this. How amazing that you did!

    They are wonderful, I'm not surprised we were attracted, yet again, to the same thing :)

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  3. How cool! Both the story, and the eggs. :-)

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  4. Love the eggs! They came out beautifully!

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  5. OMG. Reminds me of Russian beeswax eggs, SOOOO Beautiful! I'm a fan!!

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  6. Thank you for all the kind support.

    Sam--too funny! I can't wait to see your tie dyed eggs project on your blog! :)

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  7. Beautiful eggs! We always have a bunch of hard boiled eggs in the fridge. I should pretty them up some time. :)

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  8. I really love this blog entry. Those Easter eggs are simply fabulous. I'll have to use this silk technique next year. Thanks and Happy Easter!
    silk ties

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  9. We have been wanting to try this - they turned out SO GREAT!

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  10. Thanks, Denise! And thank you for adding me as a flickr contact--I love your photos and just learned you keep a cooking blog, too!

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  11. Oh, COOOL! I will definitely be trying this in the future!

    So, what were you doing wrong that they were so fragile? I'm curious, and likely to make the same mistake, haha!

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  12. Hi Cam,

    It was all the vinegar! I didn't explain it well, but when the first egg came out white, we thought it was because there wasn't enough vinegar in the pot to set the dye and added more.

    Turned out that we had one tie that wasn't silk--that was the only reason the color didn't bleed! And all that vinegar then reacted with the calcium carbonate in the eggshell--if you click on the words "figure it out?" in the post above, there is a chemical formula showing the reaction.

    Next time we'll check the labels of all the ties and add just a *little* vinegar! :)

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  13. I wanted to do these, but at home with XX wouldn't have been nearly as much as the group project! They look gorgeous!

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