Steampunk'n

Outdoing myself is now an annual thing. The only thing I can say in my defense is, if I had found all my carving tools, it would be even more complicated. I take some comfort in the fact that wild pumpkin carving is now a much more common thing, so I'm not so far out of the ordinary anymore. Yay. Rats.

You may or may not be aware of steampunk, a genre of sci-fi/fantasy (or, more properly now, speculative fiction) commonly set in the steam-powered Victorian England, which has taken on its own unique sense of style — lots of brass, gears, filigree, corsets, and heavy doses of "what if?" I confess my fascination with the visual theme, even if the fiction itself doesn't seem all that magnificent.

Of course, if you can get away with something punny, like crossing "steampunk" and "pumpkin," why, then, the gourds practically carve themselves:

Hey, I didn't take all those mechanical engineering classes for nothi.... OK, OK, I never took any!

This is also the first year that I went out to the shed and broke out the power tools in order to speed up the process. It made all those itty-bitty holes easier, but it feels like some kind of line has been crossed.

I didn't set out to do it this way — but this counter-weighted wheel, with the light, looks like cast iron being poured out. Unintentional, but I like it.

Of course, I wasn't the only one carving, so I tried to leave mine towards the end, and help the kids with theirs first. Aiden chose his theme, and we worked it out on paper. Fiona drew hers, and Deborah helped her carve it. Risanna got to scoop seeds out of hers.

Mine, Paul's Triforce-and-Master-Sword (which more people reconized than I would have thought), Risanna's bear.

Fiona's dragon.

Aiden's (pumpkin) cherry bomb, and Deborah's Nightmare Before Christmas-inspired Jack Skellington.

So, what did you make this year?

Cookie Love

We were still working through our stash of Halloween candy when Deborah bought candy canes for Christmas. I groaned: We're given enough sweets, and we go through them so slowly, that I figured I'd be finding dessicated, sticky canes at the bottom of the candy bowl next Halloween. I was still occasionally pointing this out around Valentine's day when Deborah told me she had plans for those candy canes.

Well. I can complain no longer.

Deborah sealed the candy canes in bags, and let the kids go at them with hammers. Then, she took her already-excellent dark chocolate cookies — the ones that burn delightfully with unexpected cayenne, and instead of decorating them in the usual way, mixed the candy cane fragments into frosting, and made sandwich cookies together with the kids.

Did I say I complained? Let me go back and strike out all mention of my complaining. Deborah can buy all the candy canes she wants at Christmas. These were good. Dangerously good.

Fiona made this one especially for me. I melted.

It got me thinking about the nature of love, as well. The more I looked at this cookie, the more I realized how much had gone into it. How many analogies for love could I find in this one cookie?

I came up with a bunch: Love is ...generous and overflowing; dark, and surprising (particularly when red pepper is mixed in!); drawn from the past, and applied to the present; giving good things despite whining... but in the end, I kept coming back to one that defined it all:

Love is inexpertly applied, with great enthusiasm.

Beautiful Things

I came in to work yesterday morning to find a surprisingly heavy envelope on my desk. Turns out it's from my friend and co-worker Amy, who has been joyously hammering her way back into being an artist again.

Aren't those just the coolest bookmarks ever? I love 'em!

Pumpkins!

The Grace College Mu Kappa chapter invited us over for a bonfire and pumpkin carving. They invite us to quite a number of activities, but this is one that I don't miss if I can help it. It's fun to connect with recently-landed MKs, enjoy new fireside recipes, and, of course, carve pumpkins.

I'll give you a minute to figure it out.
Give up?
It's a gastropod with an iPod. OK, stop looking at me that way. You already knew I was a geek...

Fiona drew her design before we even left the house, and Deborah transferred it onto her pumpkin. Aiden's pumpkin is the result of his constantly changing the specs of what he wanted while we were carving. The third eye was the icing on the cake.

In related news, the third time was a charm, and I finally was able to make a harvest in my pumpkin patch of... one pumpkin! Now most people would be disappointed to have planted three years running and only get one fruit, but I'm excited to have finally gotten ONE! Maybe I'll do even better next year...

Thar she be. What shall I carve on this one?

Putting a Bright Face on Things

We've developed a bit of a reputation around here for our annual pumpkin carving. Some of it may even be deserved!

Fiona's was the most straightforward pumpkin of the evening. The cat even posed for me as I inked the design, and Deborah and Fiona cut it out.

Aiden wanted a dragon. I just about gave myself carpal tunnel trying to cut that thing out. It was cool, though. I'm especially proud of the fire; this year, I tried doing some of the carving outside with the candle already lit, and it makes a HUGE difference to be able to see how the lighting turns out as you're working on it. I'll have to do more of that.

Every year, I try something harder than I can handle. It's practically a tradition in itself. This year, I went for a self-portrait...

I might have done better if I had, say, printed the picture out ahead of time, or marked it up in Photoshop to see where best to keep things connected, and where to work on the shading... but I winged it. I had to keep on turning on the camera every few minutes (a challenge with goopy fingers!) and then the batteries died, and then I broke the mouth off... oh, well. There's always next year. I'll let you decide if there's any resemblance or not.

Paul explored recursion with his pumpkin. This is something I've come to expect from programmers. Several years ago, we decorated stockings for Christmas, and Paul's design was a QBASIC program that, when run, would blink "Merry Christmas" in the middle of the screen in red and green.

Far and away the best this year was Deborah's. She went outside and got some maple leaves from our trees, traced them onto her pumpkin, and cut them out.

Build, build, ooh, ah, chomp, chomp, chomp

I'm still catching up on my backlog of Christmas pictures.

Since we moved to California back in 1980, my family has been making graham cracker houses at Christmastime. This year, however, my mother-in-law got us a gingerbread house kit, complete with house-shaped cookie cutters and frosting tips. We thought is was overkill for everyone to build their own, so we just made two, and several people helped with each.

We had a professional cake decorator (my mother-in-law) on one team, and a professional graphic designer (moi) on the other, so I figured we were pretty even as far as artistic direction.

This is serious business, folks.

Deborah and Carolyn's finished house.

Isn't that a nice roof?

Paul and I acquit ourselves nicely, too, I think.

Yum!

Halloween pictures

It has (rightly) been pointed out to me that I have posted Thanksgiving pictures, but no Halloween pictures. Let me remedy that.

See if you can figure out what I'm making....

Rip apart an old computer speaker...

Shape a piece of walnut to fit...

Paint 'em gray...

...and attach to the rest of the truck you've been working on.

So, Aiden was a truck. Fiona (at her request!) was a bathtub, complete with towel, shampoo, and rubber duckies.

This is the first year we've both gone out trick-or-treating with the kids; usually, one of us stays home and takes care of the people coming to our place. Thing is... I bought the same amount of candy as I have on other years... and no one was around to hand it out. So we've still got a lot of it. I think we have a year's supply of Nerds left.

Eggcelent Eggs

I've always felt that Easter eggs have a pretty tenuous connection with Easter (More with Ishtar, perhaps?) but they're still fun to do. We didn't even start these until about 9:00 the night before — they were still warm as we decorated them — but they came out pretty nice nonetheless.

Deborah's (left) and mine (right)

Paul's (left) and Fiona's (right)

Aiden's first Easter egg.

The Rise and Fall of the Church

Our Lady of the Held-Up Steeple

Ta-dah!

And now, a word from the head deacon on the Building Committee...