A couple years ago, when we carved a cat into Namine’s pumpkin, we had some special pumpkin carving tools. We didn’t have the chance to pick up anything like that this year, so we made do with Jessica’s various kitchen knives. (I asked permission first, just in case she didn’t want us to use specific ones.)
I didn’t want Namine to do the actual cutting, but I still wanted to involve her as much as possible. So I asked her what she wanted to carve. “We should make a ghost!” she said.
The first order of business, of course, was to empty out the pumpkin. So I cut out the top and showed Namine what the inside of the pumpkin looked like.
It took some persuading to get her to stick her hand inside the pumpkin in order to empty it of its guts.
Before we started carving, I asked Namine to draw the ghost on her pumpkin.
Then I set to carving.
While I was carving her pumpkin, Namine watched intently. I’ve never been all that good at carving pumpkins, but it was easy enough to follow her drawing. It bore more resemblance to a linoleum cut than the carving of a pumpkin, but I followed Namine’s direction. She wanted the majority of the ghost shaved off the pumpkin, not cut all the way through.
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