Pumpkin Carving 2004…
It took a couple weeks of planning, but my effort for this year’s pumpkin carving is finally over!
OK, two weeks sounds like a long time, so I should clarify that I thought of and sketched out the idea one afternoon two weeks ago. Today was carving day; just in time for Survivor night and late enough that it should still be in good condition on Sunday night for Halloween.
It seems like just about every other year that I get “into the spirit” of Halloween — so to speak! Last year, we didn’t carve anything, but the year before it was Sterling’s face that graced my pumpkin. I can’t remember other specific years, but I’ve carved Beast (from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast), Lumiere (also from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast), and a haunted mansion atop a moonlit hill.
My style varies from poking little dots as guidelines and cutting between the dots to actually drawing on the pumpkin and carving from there. This year was a combination of the two. The words below I poked, and Harry I penned in.
What made this one more fun than usual was, first, keeping it a surprise. I didn’t tell anyone my plans and kept my sketches out of sight. Second, I did the reveal on an almost real-time basis, publishing a new picture on one of my websites every half-hour or so, depending on how much progress I made. Sometimes it would be a couple hours between updates, but that certainly didn’t mean that I spent the entire time carving!
It’s almost like Thanksgiving — every year I tell myself that I’ll never eat turkey again, but the time the next year rolls around I’m ready to eat away. While I have the occasional hiatus, pumpkin carving is almost a tradition. If you were to ask me today, I’m ready to say “never again!”, but I guess I’ll have to wait to see whatever ideas I come up with next year…
OK, I’m going to have to let my comic book fan raise it’s head again, because my first thought on seeing this was “What’s Dr Gargunza doing on a broom?” (It’s the nose.)
(Having spent time in Britain in your youth, perhaps you even recognize the name?)
[Dang. Spent far more than seconds, man, and I can't find any picture of Gargunza worth linking to. If I could find the shot I wanted you'd see exactly what I mean.]