pick my pumpkin!

It was pumpkin-carving day today!

Actually, the day started bright and early with the Rooster Crow Competition, part of Wilton History Day, held at Dillard Elementary School. I took two birds, and they didn't win. By a long shot. A very very long shot. One of them crowed five times in twenty minutes, mostly within the first two minutes of the competition. The other crowded once, in the last minute of competition. The winning bird, a large game rooster named Ronald, crowed something like 53 times in twenty-minutes. OMG.


Thoroughly trounced, I sent the boys back home with Mom and drove out to Sloughhouse for the annual Harvest Festival and pumpkin carving contest. I participated last year, and won. I've been scheming for a while, because I'd really like to do that again. ;-) About a week ago I decided on my image, so I got a small pumpkin and did a practice run. Turned out lovely. This was my practice pumpkin:

Bonus points if you know what famous engraving I'm spoofing, by the way...

So this morning I showed up hoping to find a large version of the same variety of white pumpkin. Ooops, what I hadn't realized was that they don't get much bigger than that. My planned design was way too big, so I used a REALLY big white pumpkin instead, which was a different kind, and then I ended up having to ink it because it was NOT orange right under the skin, and I really hadn't wanted to have to ink it... but I digress. Here's how the day went:

Picking the perfect pumpkin:

"Uh, yeah, sure, I can carry it..."

"Holy Crap, where's a big strong man when I need one? This is really heavy! Why didn't I get a cart? What am I trying to prove? I'm going to be horrified if I drop this... Just keep walking..."

"Look at all those pumpkins!"

"Okay, now what?" Well, what was next was 5 hours of sitting on a straw bale with an itty bitty carving tool...

The blank canvas... actually I do have the outline dotted on this picture, but you can't really see that too well.

Sometimes I had an audience. Sometimes my audience was small. "Patience young grasshopper..." ;-)

But, hours later I had my design all engraved. It just didn't show up very well (sorry, forgot to photograph that part). So I made use of Jan's stash of art supplies and mixed a nasty dye concoction (the fingers on my right hand are brownish purple...) and inked the darn thing. I wish it hadn't stained the background... but that's okay. Still rocks pretty hard, I'd have to say!









So, if you're out there tomorrow, please be a dear and vote for my pumpkin. You can't miss it! I'll tell you tomorrow how everything turns out! And maybe by the middle of the week my hand will look normal again.

And did you figure out what famous image that's based on? ;-) I know my engraver friends will know!