Oh Hai, We Haz Punkins!

[chomiji]

I spent far too much time on these last night. The smaller pumpkin was more like a gourd: hard as wood. I had to add a Phillips-head screwdriver to my pumpkin-carving tools, to drill pilot holes for the little pumpkin saw-blade tool we got in a kit a couple years back.

No flash, hand-held camera (hence the blurring). The big pumpkin was designed by the Young Lady, who drew it on with a Sharpie marker. I carved it - that's far more like my usual pumpkin-carving technique. The little one is far simpler because the shell was so tough.
 

By flash ... you can see the aluminum foil I use inside behind the candles as a reflector, to make the jacks shine more brightly.
 

In related news, the Washington Post had an article on youkai this morning

Godzilla's Older, Creepier Cousins: Beings Such as Filth Licker Haunt Japanese Culture

With an added video feature: 'Yokai' Make for a Scary Halloween in Japan

(telophase, is the book they mention in the article the one that you were ordering?)

Comments

[kispexi2.livejournal.com]

Nice pumpkins.

(sounds vaguely obscene!)

[chomiji]

Indeed! Even with my current issues, I certainly haven't got quite that large a contrast in sizes ... !

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yokai Attack! is the one I reviewed a couple of weeks back. The one Amazon dumped at my doorstep this week that I'm only a chapter into and which is more scholarly is Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai by Michael Dylan Foster. :)

[chomiji]

Aha! Thanks for the clarification!

I love it when the different parts of my world come together ... youkai in the Post!

[blue-hobbit.livejournal.com]

Those pumpkins are lovely! Happy Halloween :)

[chomiji]

Awww, thanks! Happy Halloween!

[chomiji]

LOL - I was so tickled to get youkai in the Post at all that I wasn't going to be choosy about the multimedia.

We're getting a fair number of trick-or-treaters. I think some of them are only doing houses their parents know, though - I hear more noise outside than knocks on the door. But our big candy basket (the Mr.'s biggest split-oak market basket) is a little more than half down. He gave out a lot of it before I got home, and then vanished down to the comparative peace of the idiot box almost as soon as I showed up.

I'm surprising myself by being really talkative with the kids this year. And I had a pair of teenaged sisters, one of whom was dressed as the female lead from Sweeney Todd (complete with a pie) sing for me in exchange for extra candy.

Some of those costumes were really great, on those links!

(So did you read my big Eleanor story? And did you see she's doing flashfics as Halloween trick-or-treat? I got one!)

(Japanese youkai costumes)

[chomiji]

Those were indeed some fine costumes. Quite frankly, the little noppera-bo girl was unnerving enough that the problem with the face mask doesn't matter - you simply don't see it in the first horrified seconds.

It's the same effect we exploited when we did Guys and Dolls in high school. The stripper girls were wearing flesh-colored spaghetti-strap leotards under their evening gowns, and we had stitched double spirals of sequins over their busts and 4-inch fringe along the hips, contoured to dip lower in the front. It was good enough to make the audience gasp, shriek, and squeal for the first seconds after the dresses came off, even though they realized what was really going on by the 5-second mark.

(authors at Kappa-boshi)

[chomiji]

XD