Seth Godin Is the Great Pumpkin

He's everywhere you want to be. 100 lenses, 150, 300, this guy's on top of it.

Apparently he thought that Seth, like Squidoo, needed a Monster Face Lift.

The Giant 100 Squid awards outstanding Squids, right?

So he must be an upstanding member of the Squidoo Monster community.

Well, just look at that Cheshire Cat grin. I'm sure he had a pseudopod in this mischief.

He's probably jealous that Seth has more eyeballs than he does.

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Page 2 of this Squidboo lens takes you Behind the Scenes in the Seth Godin Great Pumpkin Project.

There's more pictures, and of course tips on how I made each pumpkin. Also, the GUESTBOOK.

I grew up in rural Pennsylvania. We grew most of our own veggies. Fighting with Mom over which were pie versus carving pumpkins was an annual tradition.

In Pennsylvania, if we carved a pumpkin and set it on the porch, it would last a month! I learned the hard way that they don't last long in CA without refrigeration.

(Right, a teeny cat-head sized pumpkin I carved a few years ago).

Nowadays, many people carve pumpkins by buying or creating stencil-like patterns to print out and transfer onto the pumpkin. Out of habit, I still design and carve freehand, using whatever random kitchen implements are handy. This year:

• Rice spoon for sushi to scoop the goop
• Tablespoon for smoothing the inside
• Short kitchen knife for cutting
• Paring knife for incising/carving/whittling/details
• Corn sticker for fine work or to prop the lid
• Potato peeler to skin it
• White out pen to rough out the design

I forgot I needed to buy toothpicks. I'd use them to attach noses, ears, unicorn horns (my best pumpkin ever was a full-sized unicorn head), wings, and so on. I'm rusty!

First thing was to lay down old packing paper to protect the area (my living room, so I could watch vids.)

I used to pencil in the design, but it tended to bruise the skin. For an experiment, I tried a white-out pen. It's a bit rubbery, so one can peel it off.

I had the laptop up on a high table showing my Squidoo Trophies for reference.

I use the old stop-cut technique I learned with a pocketknife, or just a paring cut.

This time, as an experiment, I tried skinning a bit of the pumpkin to make the lips of the Squidoo monster.

(The unicorn sweathshirt is a Zazzle design by our own Flynn the Cat!)

Sometimes I carve holes to insert carrots or even pumpkin stems for horns.

Or I'll peg on pieces of pumpkin or other veggies. I had some leftover Japanese cucumbers from a sushi party, so they made "tentacles".

Since I forgot toothpicks, I tried picture hangers to start with, then used small twigs.
 

Pumpkin #2 came out more like a spider than a squid!

Thank goodness I'd put down gardening plastic (which I hose off and reuse to line the car when I buy plants) and paper.

Paper went in recycling bin.

Orange County recycles "Greenwaste" as compost, so I dump the pumpkin bits in the green bin. The old pumpkins will go there too after Hallowe'en.

I was going to roast the pumpkin seeds, but I'm beat. I'll post the recipe tomorrow.