And So It Begins...

After months of procrastination, I am now determined to get this travel blog off the ground.

Catching up with a friend today, I was reminded of how much I enjoy traveling and sharing experiences.

So I hope this blog will be able to provide some useful information, or even just some entertaining stories.

Orange

In the spirit of one of the most exciting holidays approaching, I have once again teamed up with J on our pumpkin carving adventure for this year. What started out as a sudden urge and a random invitation two years ago, has manifested into a serious practice of art. With the success the first time around, we decided to challenge ourselves. The challenge? 3 weeks, 3 pumpkins, and 3 intricate designs.

J's unbelievable skills in Photoshop and the new discovery of the shaving technique meant that the sky was the limit for the pattern. He can basically transform whatever image that we liked into a pattern, so this year we decided to go with the favourites: Superman, Stitch, and Mario.

We started off with the easiest pattern, which was Superman, with mostly straight lines and the least amount of details out of the three. It was also good practice as it provided the first opportunity and attempt at shaving. Shaving is when you don't carve out the pumpkin piece entirely, instead you just shave layers off the pumpkin to a thin enough level that light will still shine through to illuminate the image. It is used when there is absolutely no way to connect some parts of the picture to the actual pumpkin. In this case, we couldn't connect Superman's eyes and mouth to the edges of his face, so we had to shave the face. Everything ended up great, even though there were a couple of places where the lines were really thin. Like I said, this pumpkin was a good one to start with because it provided practice for the more detailed patterns to follow. In addition, we also learned from this first pumpkin to carve from the center out where there are close gaps and really thin areas; otherwise, the support won't be as strong.

A week later, J and I moved on to the pumpkin #2: Stitch. For some reason, it seemed like the pumpkins this year are all really crappy; either really small or very oddly shaped. However, I think it was actually fate that led us on a wild goose chase to 2 different stores and then on the way to the 3rd, we found a place I had forgotten about and ended up with the 42 lb. pumpkin that later became Stitch-O-Lantern. It was so heavy that the scale they had in store couldn't even weigh it because it went to a maximum of 30 lbs., so we got a deal on it! SWEET! it was So HEAVY that I could hardly carry it!

As I started to cut out the top of the pumpkin, I was overcome with a sense of excitement and I was reminded of the anticipation when you take your first look inside your pumpkin. Surprisingly, considering its size and weight, the pumpkin was relatively gutless! With that said, it still took an awful long time, up to my elbows, to get all the gunk out.

Carving Stitch was actually pretty straight forward. With the rule of carving from the center outwards at the hard parts, it was pretty manageable. For example, when we did the eyes, we cut the speck on the eyeball first before the outline of the eye. If it were reversed, then the contact point to the rest of the pumpkin would have been very strained to support the carving of the speck. The actual carving was smooth, however, with the size of the pumpkin, it took a REALLY long time. We DID manage to carve out 7 lbs. from it for an end weight of 37 lbs. Starting at around 4pm, and we didn't finish until 1am, but we did go watch Paranormal Activity in between, which took up 4 hours. Regardless, it took us a total of around 6 hours! But OMG!

Last but not least, the 3rd and final pumpkin that we tackled was a completely new challenge for us. Mario was the most detailed design that we've ever worked with and the whole pattern needed to be shaved. With the gutless surprise of Stitch-O-Lantern last week, I didn't know what to expect from this one. It was nowhere near as big as the previous one,

but it still weighed a decent 21 lbs. When I took the top off and took my first peek inside, I was extremely surprised! It was the opposite of Stitch-O-Lantern as it was FILLED with guts. It felt like it was a complicated cardiac system or something crazy like that! After the excitement of that discovery, the fun level fell down a slippery slope as I realized that I had to scrape all of that OUT...

Getting right down to business, J and I quickly punched the pattern onto the pumpkin and set to work on the shaving. With nothing buy a pairing knife each, we had to delicately cut along the pattern and remove the tough orange outer layer; luckily, this pumpkin had a softer consistency, so it was easy to remove. The initial carve and peel of the pumpkin was done slowly and carefully, so as not to destroy any of the thin lines of the pattern. But after that initial first step, which was the most important one, was completed, the next step was to deepen the carved out sections so everything would be smooth, even, and thin enough so that light can shine through.

An hour into this process, I considered ourselves pretty good at it. From personal experience, I liked using a steel teaspoon and an ordinary, not too sharp, dinner knife. The steel teaspoon was small and sharp enough to get around the small areas and provide a deeper initial scoop. Then, the curved edge of the dinner knife's blade was used to slowly and evenly smooth out the area with a scraping motion. This pumpkin was by far the most tedious one that we've ever done. It took so much concentration and patience... 7 hours to be exact. By the end of it, my thumb joints were aching from holding the utensils. But at least we didn't mess up at the VERY last minute; we ended up with this baby!

The challenge? 3 weeks, 3 pumpkins, and 3 intricate designs.

The result? 3 weeks and 3 AWESOME Superman, Stitch and Mario-O-Lanterns!

The question now is probably: Was it worth EVERYTHING that was endured during the 6 - 7 hours? Probably not... But would I do it again? Hell Yeah!