Pace Eggs

When we were growing up at home we made these every Easter and I've tried to keep up the tradition. It was one of my Northumberland granny's, passed down to my mother and now me. I don't think my younger sisters make them. 

You need:  white eggs, a selection of small, pretty colourful flowers and leaves, brown onion skins, some squares of cotton, bits of old sheet, hankies or tea towel, some elastic bands and a tablespoonful of instant coffee.

Put a layer of onion skins in the palm of your hand and nestle an egg in the centre. 

Holding it quite tightly, take a flower and feed in smoothly between the egg and the skin, with the face of the flower against the egg. Adding more pieces of onion skin as you go, turn the egg slightly in your hand and carry on placing leaves and flowers next to the egg until the whole egg is covered. Put some more skins round the outside, so that it is tightly wrapped with several layers round it.

Now, put one of the cotton squares in your other hand and nestle the egg in the centre, draw the corners up and together, snuggly round the egg and either tie a piece of string, or put an elastic bands, round the neck. What you are aiming for is close contact between the flowers and the egg.

Put a tablespoon of instant coffee in a small pan of water and gently lower the eggs into it. Boil as for hard boiled eggs and then cool under a cold tap. Carefully unwrap them and see what you have created!  Rub them with a drop of oil to bring out the colours and make them shine. 

You never know how they are going to turn out, some flowers dye the eggs the same colour as they are, but you get greens, blues, yellows and lots of sepia browns. 

At Granny's, these were eaten at teatime on Easter Sunday after being jarped with your someone else's, ie bashed against it so that the shell cracked!  I just remember them sitting in a bowl, looking pretty, in our house.

I must thank Mike for taking some of these photos and my aunt for the word 'jarp'! That got lost somewhere between Northumberland and Lancashire!

I hope this blip sparks the memories of some blippers and is of interest to others. I have never come across anyone other than our family who makes these, so it may well be a dying pastime. I hope from this description, someone else gives it a go! Let me know!