Good Things™ for Halloween

Halloween is my favourite holiday of the year probably because it involves candy and no family or religious obligations. Last year I carved up a pumpkin and extorted a few photos out of Jarkko for fun and giggles.

This year I thought I'd embrace the Martha within and share how I made the 'Perl pumpkin' so you too can terrify everyone on your block :).

1. Purchase a resonably large and smooth skinned pumpkin. This is a key step :)
2. Remove guts of pumpkin. Save goo for later to torment the obnoxious kids in the neighborhood or drunken adults trick-or-treating when they show up at your door.
3. Print out 2 copies of the pattern and tape one copy on clean and dry pumpkin. You may need to make vertical slits along the sides to make pattern lie flat on pumpkin.
4. Get out your tools. You will need an exacto or box knife, sharp utility knife and a speedball linoleum cutter found at most art stores (unless you live in MA which seems to be devoid of linoleum cutters) or you can order a really deluxe set of tools from Martha. I'll confess to owning this and it is a really nice set if you are into carving pumpkins. Some stores carry a cheap-o set of tools from the pumpkin masters but they are frustratingly cheap and you are better off carving the pumpkin with a dremel.
5. Use the exacto or box knife to trace around the white areas. Do the inside of the P and the E first, then the others. After these are all done, leaving only black paper, trace around the edge of the black.
6. Look at your 2nd copy of the pattern and take a black marker to mark the parts that are black on the pattern as a reminder which parts are going to be scraped.
7. Get out your speedball linoleum cutter and start from the right side of the design and, in clean vertical cuts, start removing the skin. You need only make one pass per cut since you seek only to remove the orange skin and give it a woodcut-like appearance.
8. When done scraping the marked areas, use utility knife inside the pumpkin to carefully cut away a bit of the rind in the area of the design.
9. Use drill or other instrument to create air holes in back or on on the bottom of the pumpkin for the candle
10. Insert candle, display and watch those neighborhood kids run screaming from your house.
11. If a guy with long hair calling himself "St. Ignucius" shows up at your door, hand him an AOL CD and point to the pumpkin before shutting the door. :)

14 Oct 2001 at 14:27, Helsinki