Museum hosting egg-citing workshops for Easter

If you're looking for ways to celebrate Easter, Timmins Museum: National Exhibition Centre will be teaching the ancient art of making pysanky eggs.

There will be in-person and virtual workshops for youth and adults.

A pysanka, or pysanky in plural, is a Ukrainian Easter egg decorated with intricate, traditional folk designs using batik or wax-resist method. Designs are not painted on but are written with beeswax. The word pysanka comes from the verb “pysaty” meaning “to write.”

“It’s a practice they would use to tell stories. This has been done for generations where they would just melt the wax and you write your story because each of these symbols represents something spiritual or something in the home,” said Monica Towsley, the museum’s program co-ordinator. "They would be decorated by the women in the house."

Participants can attend in-person workshops or pick up a kit with pysanka tools at the museum and decorate the eggs at home following virtual instructions.

For children over the age of eight, the in-person events are slated for Tuesday, April 13 and Thursday, April 15 from 10 a.m. to noon.

Adults can register for an in-person event on Thursday, April 8 that will run from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

There’s a limit of 10 people for the youth workshops and a maximum of 15 participants for the adult session. The COVID-19 protocols will be followed.

The cost to pick up a kit or attend in-person events is $25 plus tax. The kit doesn’t include eggs or vinegar. Raw stamp-free white chicken eggs can be used to make pysanky eggs.

"After you write your designs onto your egg, then you dye it in various dyes," Towsley said. "Traditionally, they used to use onion peels or beet to dye the eggs. But nowadays, we have modern technologies to dye the eggs with actual dye, often involving vinegar as well."

Virtual instructions will air Thursday, April 1 on the museum’s website and YouTube channel and will be available indefinitely.

“You can do it at home, at your own time, you can do it at your own pace,” Towsley said. “You get to take (the kit) home and you can do it again next year. You’re not just paying $25 for the one-time use, you get to take this stuff home after. ”

To register, call the museum at 705-360-2617.