Pumpkin Carving

 I carved pumpkins again this year. I used a Drummel tool with the carving bits to do my pumpkins. 

 This one is supposed to be a dog. I traced a photo of one of our dogs, but I had trouble. The tracings either looked like a teddy bear or a pig. I tried several times and then decided this would have to do. 

 I found this pattern on Pinterest. After I finished carving it, I dropped the pumpkin and the mouth area fell off. I had to fix it with toothpicks. You can see one of the toothpicks if you look closely. 

 I used a photo of one of our cats to make this template. This is my favorite pumpkin this year. 

 This is the photo that I traced of our cat, Mystique. Not all her tabby coat markings are on the traced paper, but this gave me a good starting point. 

 This is the cat template. I used an Exacto knife and cut out the carving areas. Sewing pins tacked the paper onto the pumpkin and I marked the lines with a red Sharpie fine point marker. Notice that not all my lines meet. 

 Last year, my hands were sore trying to scrape out the pumpkins so that the Drummel tool could cut deep enough for the light to show through. This year, I ordered this from Amazon. It was much easier and a lot quicker to scrape down the pumpkins.