Pumpkin Carving Part 2

 
Ethan really liked the color-changing electric candle in his pumpkin, and I sorta have to agree. Green is my favorite, obvously.


 
And here is the whole line-up from the kids. I think the quidditch pumpkin really looks great - proud daddy moment for Cain's fancy design realization. The vampire bunny is just too cute. I wish you could set the color on those little changing candles, because the bunny is amazing in magenta/violet, but it flashes through too quick for me to catch it.


Audrey STILL hasn't finished hers yet, the crazy. She has a blondie yellow-orange pumpkin with a swirly stem, who is now pouting on the counter, on the verge of a complete emotional breakdown after having to watch all the other pumpkins get all the attention for two days in a row. Because pumpkins love to be beheaded, gutted, mutilated, and set afire for our enjoyment.

I am totally happy with my pumpkin this year. I showed you the bottom half in the previous post, but the fun part is that I got a second pumpkin, a white one, to make a brain sticking up  out of the head. here's how it turned out:


I used power tools when carving for the first time this year. I don't have a dremel, which is apparently the tool of choice, but I found that a variety of drill/screwdriver bits gave me the effect I needed. I still had to skin it with a potato peeler, though, which was a bit time-consuming. It has to be skinned, though, to let some light through for the lit effect:



 

Cornucopia, or Pumpkin Carving part 1

I'm neutral about 'Cornucopia' as a WoTD ... Its a good word, but not spectacular. It reminds me of Hunger Games now - I actually read all three books recently. but thats not the point.

The point is pumpkin carving!

The kids and I started pumpkin carving last night. Raechel (9) had a little struggle figuring out how to carve a vampire bunny, but found a good (not undead) bunny carved pumpkin image online that got her thinking in the right direction (the classic put a circle around it solution). She got a little ambitious carving her circle and almost detached the bunny from the middle, but that's easy to fix with a few toothpicks, so our vampire bunny is is good shape.

Ethan, who turned 5 a few weeks ago, gutted his pumpkin with minimal assistance after I cut out the top, drew on a face with marker, poked holes along the lines so he had a chance to use the hole-poking tool, then cut the eyes and nose out all by himself. I did the mouth for him, though. He was going for scary: 

Cain (10), is still on his Harry Potter kick, and gave himself a very ambitious pumpkin - he wanted to carve a quidditch match. He knew I used skinning/sculpture methods, and thought he might do the same, but ended up simplifying it to cutouts, not that its particularly simple. The entire design and execution is his. 

  

I think his speed lines are going to look awesome. He's a little disappointed that he didn't get more detail into the players, but I'm pretty impressed, myself. 

Audrey hasn't worked on her pumpkin yet - I think she's doing it today or tomorrow during the day. I started mine last night, but I have a lot more work yet to do. Here's the finished part: 

I'll post more pics when they're all done and lit up! 

I love carving pumpkins. I think tonight's going to be a lot of work, and next year I may have to get a dremel to make it go faster if I do another complicated one. 

Asseverate

: to affirm or declare positively or earnestly

• EXAMPLES

"I will myself asseverate and bind it by an oath, that the muff thou bearest in thy hand belongeth unto Madam Sophia; for I have frequently observed her, of later days, to bear it about her." — From Henry Fielding’s 1749 novel Tom Jones

Actually, that's all. This made me crack up.

ensky

This morning I started to read Ocean at the End of the Lane while riding the bus. I was losing myself, just about to fall madly in love with the little book, when the bus ride ended and I had to get our for work. In closing the book, something fell out, but it wasn't my bookmark, which was still there. I got down and searched the floor, and saw a brightly colored green and blue card sporting an exotic and eldritch-looking symbol. It wasn't rectangular like a playing card or index card, but square.

This is a point of departure. At this point, I could tell you what really happened next, or I could make some shit up that I find more interesting. I'm not telling you which way I will go.

There was more writing on the back of the card, but I didn't actually register any words, as I was also trying to get my book back in my bag, and exit the bus, and already my work-brain was informing me that there were e-mails to compose and cells to feed and DNA to mutate. So I just slipped the card back into the book. Then a pipe fell from the construction guys working on the side of the building, and there was significant pain, and blood, and then not much until I woke up beeping in a hospital bed at St. Mary's feeling very nauseated and with a strong sense that my head ought to be hurting, but wasn't. Or maybe more like my head was hurting, but I wasn't feeling the pain. Then I vomited, and as I blacked out again I clearly remember being very embarrassed, because some nurse was going to have to clean it up.

See, that's not very believable. Because why would I be blogging about that if it happened just this morning? I certainly wouldn't be in any condition to write, if i was on a bunch of painkillers, and I don't even have a laptop to write from a hospital room, and I am certainly not going to write that much on my phone. Take 2:

There was more writing on the back of the card, but I didn't actually register any words, as I was also trying to get my book back in my bag, and exit the bus, and already my work-brain was informing me that there were e-mails to compose and cells to feed and DNA to mutate. So I just slipped the card back into the book. I went upstairs to my desk, and had just about sat down when Dan asked if I could mutate some DNA for him, because his first attempt didn't work, and blah blah blah excuses could I do it for him? Sure, Dan. And there was a call from the vet upstairs about one of the cats - please call him back.

hmmm. still unsatisfying. Ensky means to exalt, pronounced like enthrone, not like Penske.

Fimbriated

Fimbriated - basically means fringed, but I love the definition: having the edge or extremity bordered by slender processes : fringed

Recommended ChaoticShiny writing exercise generator to my brother, and decided I would try it: 

Write for at least 300 words about a trigger, a newspaper, and a rodent.

The air was crisp and clear and dry outside the burrow. Most of the leaves had relocated to the ground for the winter. Normally, I'd grab tons of the crunching dry leaves, before they rotted, and drag them inside for nesting, but this year I had something even better. I was keeping an eye on the neighborhood raccoon (its the sort of thing my mom would repeat - don't keep tabs on the raccoon and you'll usually be in for a nasty surprise) and saw it hanging out in these big plastic bins that showed up with the big loud pink creatures. One of them is chock full of newspaper. The pinkies are surely the worst hoarders ever - keeping all their valuable nesting material open to the elements when they have an enormous nest that none of us have figured out how to infiltrate yet. Anyway, I grabbed as much as I could and dragged it home. So I don't have to bother with leaves, since newspaper is better in pretty much every way. 

When mom wasn't home, I loaded the BB gun I'd just gotten for my birthday and put on my halloween costume. The Lone Ranger is on patrol! Watch out bad guys! I get on my bike to survey the neighborhood for evildoers, which turns out to be awesome because if I get going fast enough my cape billows, just like the real lone ranger riding his big white horse. I can always go fastest on the downhill driveway of the church, so I go there and practice billowing. I don't see any evildoers, but they're probably just scared off by how badass I look.  If my brother is finished with his homework maybe he can put on his ninja costume and I can ride him down and bring him to jail. The doghouse would be a perfect jail. I head back home and see a rabbit poking its head out of a burrow in our front yard. I don't think it saw me. I quietly stop my bike, get off, and creep behind a bush. The rabbit is crawling out, nibbling on some of mom's flowers. Mom hates seeing those flowers eaten. Not exactly a scary villain, but it'll do. I creep a little closer behind the landscaping and take out my pistol. That rabbit will be so scared it'll never eat another flower! I get on my elbows like a little green plastic army guy and take aim. 

There's a loud clap and my left shoulder explodes in pain. The shock sends me about three feet in the air, which is totally stupid. get down, hide, freeze, get in the bushes, get down, hide .... front left leg won't work at all, but I get under cover of a bush. Freeze. Listen, freeze. There is a big pinkie coming around from behind a bush - its definitely looking for me. I can make it to the burrow. I dart, and tumble because my leg won't work. My fur is wet. I dart again, and stumble. Its running at me now and the clap keeps going off. I barely make it into the burrow and there are more claps, even louder inside, and dirt near the entry is bursting in little puffs with every clap. Freeze, hide, listen, freeze. Listen. The claps stop, and I hear him moving away. My fur is wet all down my left front leg. I try to clean it, and it hurts. Its blood from a small hole near my shoulder. Its hard to groom there, but grooming is soothing, as long as I don't move the leg too much.