pumpkin carving

halloween without jack 'o lanterns, is like pancakes without apple sauce.

so creating these lanterns by carving pumpkins is a widely enjoyed activity by young and old u.s. americans. this year i got invited to a party dedicated to producing these neat halloween essentials.

before you slashing about with knives and baby saws, the pumpkin needs to be freed of its whitish, somewhat foamy, seed-laced innards. after a quick circular cut to lift off the top part, we used greenish mini plastic shovels, that came with a pumpkin carving kit, to scoop out the useless inside. (some people clean and roast the seeds, though).














only then a pattern is applied to the outer surface.














this is done either by a blueprint that has tiny holes along black lines to punctuated the pattern on the pumpkin or













by simply drawing on the orange skin with a marker. but if you are like me, you just dig out your swiss army knife and start attacking.


















the result in my case turned out to be quite...crude, to put it politely. i don´t know why people needed an explanation to my simple image. everyone can sure recognize this skillfully carved hole as a shooting star!?!


















luckily i was not alone in my misery. another artist had some trouble to have her shape identified as the african continent, mind you, of course with madagascar situated in the south east.

















after the recognition rate for my little wishing star was quite low, i tried the more common jack o lantern face approach. it´s not my fault it turned out lob-sided. my pumpkin baby was born with this disability to begin with.

















other pumpkin carvers did a much better job in cleaning and smoothing the gaps into a refined image.















even the more unusual kitty-cat pattern came out about right.


















as well as this rabbit-toothed companion, the biggest pumpkin of my carving season.


















but the prizes for the most intricate patterns go to an anonymous artist who carved the calligraphic arabic word for al jazeera (meaning peninsula by the way) as well as















a young carver in the cleveland region for the neatest design and scariest effect!