The Pumpkin Progression

I'm a Halloween child. With my birthday falling a mere six days before candy bar d-day, I actually was not aware until elementary school that non-Halloween themed birthday parties were done, much less, that they were acceptable. Excuse me, what kind of party is worth having in which the guests don't dress up like princesses, carve pumpkins, and eat only orange and black candy? If I had enough time I could get in to everything that is wrong with our society from that one sentence (lack of imagination leads to lack of progress, lack of work leads to a degraded moral system which begs for a handout, and lack of clear choices leads to a corrupted system of loopholes, to name a few). Moral of the story, I love Halloween.

As a young padawan, I was trained by my father, a great jedi master of pumpkins, in the methods of carving. My father believes in having a plan, drawing it out, planning effectively for pumpkin thickness and size, and even choosing the perfect pumpkin, the one which calls to you and your art. There is no time limit, only a quality limit. It's getting dark on the driveway? No problem, he installed lights. You're having trouble getting that knife to cut? Here, let me get you one of his specially designated pumpkin carving knives. You cut corners and your product is sub par? I pity the fool. It was with this background that I embarked on creating my orange, perishable, masterpiece for HW2013.

Josh and I assembled our tools on the patio and designated a central pumpkin waste area and carefully crafted our templates.

Beverage, carver, pumpkin, tool storage, waste management site.

We then hollowed out the artistic vessels with precision, achieving the perfect thickness to allow for the "pumpkin glow" phenomena.

Look at that technique! All in the wrist.

Finally, we got down to the business of carving.

Utter concentration

When all the steps had been completed, there was an air of anticipation and nervousness. You see, the thing is, you never know what the pumpkin will actually look like until you light it up. Many a beautiful daylight pumpkin has fallen short of its intended purpose under the harsh test of candles and absolute darkness. It's sort of like offering a slightly-less-than-virgin sacrifice at a pagan bonfire, candles and darkness do not lie. Josh struck a match, we waited with baited breath. I had to cover my eyes. I heard Josh's gasp as the candles struck and whipped my eyes to the glowing orbs. They were beautiful! exactly as we had envisioned, glowing with the light of one thousand worlds through all of space and time. I'd call them the heart of the TARDIS, but I don't think that does them justice.

The doctor is in.

*Note: Josh's is the more professional looking one on the left. Sorry Daddy, I still don't have the gift, but I do have a really great system and you can be proud of that!