Long thought to be extinct, and to live only in its natural habitat of Southern Australia and the island of Tasmania, a fine specimen of Tasmanian Tiger (aka Thylacine) was spotted and photographed in Pittsburgh!  Amazingly it was also in my front yard… during our pumpkin carving party… and it’s wearing a collar… and looks suspiciously like someone just panited our dog.

Real Tasmanian Tigers are incredibly cool animals.  For more info check out the Thylacine Museum.

Fire-face, from 2006

Last year I published an ebook on pumpkin carving just barely in time for Halloween at Lulu.com. I just posted the second edition of the book, and this time it’s early enough that it could actually be of use to people in time for Halloween. It’s got more tips, more photos, AND more patterns (drawn by me of course). It’s awesome. Now all I have to do is get people to buy it. One thing that I think would help would be reviews. If you are one of the people who already bought the book, I would sure appreciate a review on the Lulu site here. If you haven’t bought it yet, TIME’S-A-WASTIN’! There’s pumpkins to be carved!

Also, if you liked the book, please spread the word and tell a friend. It would make me very happy.

Get Carving Tips and Tricks here, along with photos of the pumpkins I’ve carved in the past OR check out the enhanced version in my ebook with patterns, a seed roasting recipe, etc.  Get your $2 ready and go here.

Mark Hayward has just released his first eBook: Pumpkin Carving Tips, Tricks and Patterns.

Even if you don’t want to be the Best in the World and just want to carve a better pumpkin than last year, you should check this out. It’ll be the best $2 you ever spend on Halloween for something that wasn’t covered in chocolate.

A lot of work went in to putting together this first edition of Pumpkin Carving Tips, Tricks and Patterns, and the second edition will be out in time for Halloween next year. The book was written as an enhanced version of Mark’s pumpkin web page.

Many a good pumpkin was carved, and some new tools were even introduced, including a wood-carving chisel set and a eye-gouger/mellon-baller that Richard brought.

This year my pumpkin was not very intricately carved, this time it was all about the fire.

I got the idea from the good people over at www.extremepumpkins.com. They had been working on how to get more fire into a pumpkin when they got an email from a boy scout leader on how to do it. Kids don’t try this at home, it has the potential to be VERY dangerous. I soaked a roll of toilet paper in kerosene overnight, put it in the pumpkin and lit it. It was AWESOME!. The flames didn’t last as long for me as they did for the extremepumpkins.com folks, but I’m going to see if I can get a more dense roll of toilet paper and try again on Halloween.

My friend Ben and I are going to try another thing from www.extremepumpkins.com this year too: The Trashcan Costume. Ben and my friend Matt Byam put the thing together at the start of the pumpkin carving party, and it is going to be great! We get over 300 kids in two hours on Halloween in my neighborhood, and some of them are too old or don’t dress up, so we’re going to make them have to work for their candy. I feel like most kids don’t get enough terror in their lives, so we’re actually doing them a favor. The plan is to use three difernet methods to scare the snot out of them. We’ll see how it goes, and I’ll post the results here.

Also, check out my pumpkins page on markhayward.net

Harper, Matiss and I showed up with a bag full of juggling machetes and two pumpkins.

We carved this one in advance, and the other was to be carved while we juggled.

Two guys passed six knives between them, and the thrid guy had an extra knife and hacked at the pumpkin for a second before cycling back into the pattern and letting the next guy take a few swings at it.  After a few minutes of reducing the pumpkin to a paste, Matiss stood in front of the slain gourd and did some solo tricks while Harper and I not-so-discretely switched the slain pumpkin for the nicely carved one we had kept hidden.  We got a good reaction from the audience, it was a lot of fun, and I really look forward to seeing the video tape.

I have to admit though that I was the weak link in the whole operation.  It turns out that it’s a lot harder than I realized to juggle knives for that long.  Harper and Matiss had recently been doing a knife act so they were used to it, but once my forearms cramped up I started dropping a lot.

On Saturday the three of us went down to Dailey Plaza and saw the Midnight Circus Halloween show.  It was really fun.  I highly recommend it.  I guess they do slightly different shows throughout the day, so if I can get back up to Chicago before Halloween I will have to camp out for the whole day.  After the show we got to hang out with Keith Bindlestiff of the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus.  Always a good time.

What’s going on here?!? Are retailers really that desperate, or is this a sign of the disintegration of modern society and the onset of Armageddon? I mean really… September is the start of Christmas? Come on! We’re not even in the same financial quarter as Christmas yet. Maybe I’m getting cranky at an early age, but I think this is SICK and WRONG.

For those of you who are in an accelerated holiday state, you may have already started thinking about pumpkin carving. If so, I can be of service. I have amassed some pumpkin carving tricks and tips for the betterment of mankind. And please… let’s all try to remember that there are still two major holidays BEFORE we get to Christmas.