Pumpkinography - yet again...

Halloween weekend begins!

We had a quiet pumpkin carving session at the Cousins place and had a parade with four kids. It was quiet quite fun. Tomorrow will be the trick or treat routine (if it doesn't rain or get too cold)

This year, I was not sure of my carving abilities, what with the right hand being at 25% strength and all, but took a long time and used the "erumbu oora kallum theyum" routine (even an ant can polish a stone by repeatedly walking on it...) and managed a scarecrow and a crow in the background.

The pictures..

The idea was to carve two images and have one create a shadow. The Michael Jackson looking scarecrow on one side and a crow on the other side to get the shadow. The crow side...

The MJ scarecrow with a bird on his hand..

Looks like the standard has been set very high in the previous years. Jr., said "good, but not as good as the spider we did last year"!

(Checked and found that the spider was not last year..Previous pumpkin links from 2005, 2006-1, 2006-2, 2007-1, 2007-2, 2008)

Next year, it is going to be a web full of spiders, on all sides..

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There are two sides to..

There are two sides to every pumpkin. Many more if you consider that it is round! At least two sides though, from a carving point of view!

With a lot of enthu this morning (thanks to a good night's sleep), daddy decided to carve up what remaining space was available on the small pumpkin from last night.(note the small circle, which was the little one's contribution to the drawing effort. Next year, we will ask her to draw a pillaiyar suzhi, which will be added to the carving and give a new desi twist to Halloween)

For added effect we decided to use the haunted house to create a shadow on the wall for the pictures.

Now that a more complicated pattern has been done, daddy is happy and will take a long afternoon nap to celebrate Halloween.

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Pumpkin baby ... baby pumpkin

Okay. There was a change of heart, although it came very late in the day.

Work has been gruelling the last couple of days and there was no strength left when I came home, but the little darlings gave me enough hugs and kisses to bribe me into taking them trick or treating to three houses,and make me carve a pumpkin, with some great help from friends!

After the witch beguiled me with her smile and the little devil drove me nuts with her details, we went to Mitr's and K.'s place to carve a pumpkin.

A few thanks first :
1. To a baby boy A. who graciously picked this pumpkin from his school
2. To the boy's parents for leaving that pumpkin by mistake with Mitr and K.
3. To Mitr and K. for graciously letting us use their table for the "step by step" carving guide on that pumpkin
4. To San for being very patient with me today
4. and to Jr. and little one for pushing their tired and sick daddy to get back into the halloween spirit, no pun intended!

Now for the step by step instruction:

Take a pumpkin (the larger the better!), spread a garbage bag or some newspaper on the table before you start.

They sell stencils or pre drawn patterns along with carving kits (a book with 12 patterns, a scooper to get the goop from inside the pumpkin and two serrated carvers, one coarse and one fine all come for 5$).

However, the better thing to do instead of sticking the stencil on the pumpkin, would be to free hand draw the pattern on the pumpkin so you adjust the picture to scale. This takes some practice. In our case little A. must have picked a pumpkin he could handle with his tiny hands and that made it challenging to draw any elaborate pattern and then carve it. (the smaller the features get, the more difficult it is to separate the pieces and get them out!)

Do not use a sketch pen to draw. Use a permanent marker! Once you are done with the drawing, slice out a circle on the top and clean out the top.

Then scoop out the stuff from inside and make sure it is clean! If you leave beind the fibrous stuff, you will not be able to pop out the carved bits easily..

Then delicately start pushing the carving blade straight down (perpendicular to pumpkin surface) and start moving along the pattern. Once you finish a section, gently push the piece out and keep going. Remember, slow and steady...

Then slice out the inside on thick sections of the pattern so there is some translucency and put a candle inside!

Granted, this years piece was not even close to the ones in the last few years, but this is all that we managed in the 15 minutes at K and Mitr's place. (previous years stuff here, here, here and here!

Next year, we will give you a Mona Lisa...

On a side note, they should move up Halloween ahead by two weeks. All this global warming is making every halloween worse than the previous year when it comes to the weather!

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No pumpkins so far

The last couple of days, weather has been gloomy to say the least.

No enthusiasm to carve a pumpkin, although the little ones have been begging for at least the bare minimum "Jack-O-Lantern" for the last two days.

Need a change of heart to mess with a pumpkin tomorrow.

The times, they are a changing, or are they?

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When your pumpkin shrivels...

Just carve yourself a new one..

My workplace had a pumpkin carving contest. They gave us all a free pumpkin to carve. We also had the Halloween bash at Balaji's. Thought I could kill two birds with one stone and carved a nice one on sunday. By tuesday, the thing shrivelled and became so unrecognizable that it wouldn't be worth bringing anywhere near the display.

So I did one, last minute. Did not win, but got complimented by almost everyone. Made the kids very very happy when I got it home tonight.

Here it is..

Had to black out the spider on the surface so I wouldn't carve it out by mistake.

If only I could keep them from shrivelling so fast!

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