So…we carved pumpkins last weekend. Apparently, because I’m an idiot. See, pumpkins do this amazing thing…mold. Oh yes, yes they do. Mold in no uncertain terms. Mold like a 7th grade gym sock. Mold. Green, scary mold with white tendrils reaching out to capture anything near it.

So…on one hand, I have some REALLY scary pumpkins…on the other hand, it’s not at all the scary I was shooting for. *Sigh*

So today while I was running around, I stopped by Micheal’s and picked up some craft pumpkins. (On huge discount…yay me!) But, because all the Halloween stuff has mostly been replaced by Xmas stuff everywhere, there were none of those little electric carvers left. I don’t know if any of y’all have ever tried to carve a craft pumpkin, but good gods in Valhalla, it’s a nightmare. They shred, they’re really hard to cut; it makes carving regular pumpkins look easy.

So, I asked one of the incredibly knowledgeable workers if she had any ideas, and she turned me on to this tool, which is so damn cool I’ll have to find other projects to play with it.

I replicated my goblin pattern on the craft pumpkin. Real pumpkin took about 2.5 hours all told. Craft pumpkin with hot knife…about an hour, and it looks even better because I could do all the tiny detailing that I couldn’t do on the real pumpkin because of planned shrinkage. Whoo hoo!

Note to self; do not ever try to do that in the house again. The fumes…well, lets just say that a more than about 5 minutes with those fumes and I might have started having flashbacks. Yeesh. Thank goodness Man left an extension cord outside, so I sat on the porch and fumed my neighborhood instead. Also, the warnings not to grab the metal parts while the knife is hot…they’re so not kidding. I think I’ve lost fingerprints on my index finger and thumb. I suppose it’s probably too late in life to take up safe cracking though, so…that’s kinda sad. Heh.

So, now I’ve got two craft pumpkins done; the goblin and a witch stirring a cauldron with a ghost coming out. I’ve got one left, and I’m going to let Boy decide what it should be. And we’ve got one real pumpkin, but it’s the right size for a jack o’ lantern, so I think I’ll help Boy carve that one himself a little closer to Halloween.

Thus, Halloween is saved, thanks to hot knife, a friendly sales clerk, and the miracle of orange styrofoam.