Looking forward to Drew’s visit, for the next couple of weeks.
Hopefully it won’t be too cold for ultimate Frisbee.
Planning on carving a pumpkin sometime today or tomorrow.
Pumpkin guts and fresh pumpkin smell all over. The best part is when you cut off the top and put your hand into the epic squishiness for the first time.
When I was little, I used to scrape the pumpkin insides out with pottery tools, and the inner walls got nice and thin, which made it easy to carve, and also gave it a fabulous eerie glow when it was lit.
I had a serrated knife with with a red plastic handle and my name etched into it. The end of the handle was a grinning Jack O’ Lantern.
There always seems to be someone who carves epic pumpkins, either making realistic sculptures, faces peeled back from the pumpkin, monsters reaching for you, or creative use of negative space, or stenciled shapes. Dunno what I’ll do this year, though I usually end up doing demonic faces. I don’t care about the shape of the pumpkin. This year I decided I’d like a round one, but skinny, oblong or bizarrely shaped pumpkins can make appealing Jack O’ Lanterns too. I have made ghoul faces, lost souls wailing, angry animals, evil monkeys.
My friend carved a fish into a pumpkin once, and it looked fabulous-zombie fish on the prowl.
Ages ago I carved a pumpkin on a whim when I was meandering the quadrangle, roughly sort of between classes, but really looking for something to do, and won a prize from the Power Plant. I carved a cat face, snarling fangs and skinny, crooked whiskers.
…Aaaand I dunno where to put it either. Maybe I’ll write a screen play for it-little lost pumpkin looking for a window ledge and a house to defend.
It’s sunny and bright right now, which is not a great atmosphere for carving scary faces into pumpkins. It should be gloomy, misty or frosty. I’ll have to light some candles and put on eerie music to get into the right mood to carve a scary j-o-l.
Tags: carving, jack o lanterns, nostalgia, Pumpkins
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