So its that time of year again. The air is crisp, the days are much shorter, and the grass in the back yard is covered in leaves from the neighbor’s trees. Tonight shivering street urchins will be knocking at the door in a variety of costumes begging for candy. My candy. Not yours. Can’t have. Okay, fine, you can have one. Damn kids. And get off my lawn!
But the best part of this time of year is of course the surgical experiments that we perform on the unwilling orange gourds. This year we had a much harder time finding very many good patterns or ideas. Lots of simple traditional ideas, the triangles for eyes, nose and the square toothed grin. No thanks. There were also a lot of “Christian Un-Halloween” patterns like Noah’s Ark and Peace Doves, wtf? That one is a whole different rant that I don’t really want to get into.
At any rate, Jessica and I both found patterns that we liked, and that would be as good or better than previous years. She decided on a werewolf and I decided on one of the Immortals from 300. Both challenging.
After a few cups of coffee (nothing like shaky hands when using exacto knives), and about an hour and a half of carving, here they are (click for bigger):
I botched mine in a couple places, but its not overly noticeable. Scraping out the insides to get mine the right thickness for carving I tore a slight hole just below the nostril. Near the mouth I also hit a soft spot with the exacto knife and cut a bit too much — twice. Can’t really tell once they’re lit, though:
Happy Halloween everyone!
