Pumpkin carving - part 2

This is my pumpkin - the bat. After scooping out the insides and cleaning the seeds to roast, I placed a pattern on my pumpkin and "traced" it. The tracing is really poking the pattern into the shell of the pumpkin with a small plastic toothpick. If you look closely, you can see the pattern.

I learned a few important things yesterday:
1. Make sure you really clean out the insides or else they will make it hard to see the light or could actually burn.
2. If you have small intricate parts of the design (like the bat's eyes), do them first.
3. This is a long and slow process. Be patient or else you might make stray cuts into the pumpkin.
4. Carving the pumpkin the day of Halloween is good because then it is not rotten by the time people come look at it.
5. Your pumpkin might scare the kids away. We didn't have any trick or treaters.