2019 Pumpkins

The first pumpkin that I carved this year was in honor of the coffee shop I now frequent since our recent move. The Black Gold Coffee Company is located in Black Diamond, WA. The letter 'O' in 'GOLD' is meant to be a coffee bean. The black diamond shape in the unlit daytime version is a bit larger than I envisioned it and the coffee cup handle a bit too small. The owner immediately recognized that I was going for a coffee cup pumpkin.

Here's the night time version. If I had simply carved out the letters and carved an outline of the diamond it would have looked like a black diamond. I not only needed a toothpick to stabilize the 'GOLD' but the letters themselves began to shrink after a couple of days. 

This year I carved pumpkins with my family. There were five of us carving both store-bought and home-grown pumpkins. My wife did a Martha Stewart-inspired polka dot pumpkin, executing perfectly matching hole cutouts. My daughter did a monster from "Stranger Things", and I carefully peeled off lines to form the web design for Spiderman's head. My sister-in-law made a ghoul for hers and her husband a more traditional pumpkin face. Some of the pumpkins had pretty thick skins, so there was a lot of sawing!

Since three of the five awesome creations were taken home to Enumclaw and Seattle, I decided to carve two more pumpkins. One is the Cheshire Cat (left) from Alice in Wonderland and the other is the character Groot (right) from the movie Guardians of the Galaxy.

All of these pumpkins show a variety of carving techniques that are fun to try. It's also fun to carve different shapes and sizes of pumpkins. Your pumpkin doesn't have to be in the traditional orange color and may also be painted. Think about what you want on your pumpkin or simply dream up a spooky face. It's fun to remove the darker orange skin and even carve to different depths for a variety of values from light to dark.

Here are some more examples from a previous year. I am thinking of carving a witch's face out of one of those bumpy gourds next year.

The warts would already be there!