Betsy, a Curious George character, incarnated in pumpkin.

The question about what skills are transferrable from woodworking comes up on occasion in online discussions. Certainly the ability to measure, mark, and cut to that mark apply to a lot of crafts, and sometimes in unexpected ways. Take pumpkin carving. When asked what kind of jack o’ lantern he wanted, my son Peter replied “Betsy.” Betsy, for the uninitiated, is a character from the animated adaptation of the Curious George books. Peter gets points for originality, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to deliver.

An image search provided a suitable screen grab of Betsy. To transfer the image, I cut out the face and hair and traced them with a black Sharpie, then punched a toothpick along the details of the face and connected the dots. After clearing out the pumpkin, I drilled out the eyes with an appropriately-sized bit and used a pumkin-carving tool to define Betsy’s eyebrows, nose, and mouth. The hair presented more of a challenge. I first used a V chisel to define the outline of the head and hair, then used a gouge to scrape off the pumpkin’s outer skin within the hair outline. The results at least passed muster with a three-year-old.