Bump in the Night: Hallowe'en 2025

It was a dark and stormy night... well, it's true.  The wind was terrible and we had to take in some of the decorations before they got ruined.  I didn't have much out on the lawn this year and the weather didn't permit adding much more.  Of course, we were still decorated more than most houses and looked good but I wish Mother Nature would be a little kinder to us spooks!  

Anyway, it was cold, very windy and started to rain again around 7:30.  We still had 59 trick or treaters, which is about normal.  There were some imaginative costumes!

The next day, our Day of the Dead celebration was sombre and beautiful, and there were treats laid out for everyone.  The dogs were restless, so I think we did have some visitors.  

Before Hallowe'en, I did needle felt a rather special fellow, a new addition to my perpetual spooky decor.  He started out as a rather large, white blob:

I used polyester fibrefil because I still have bags of the stuff and it felts super fast.

I then began carving out and shaping his face, building on the nose and cutting out the eye holes.

I wanted a yellow rind so I poked on a lovely bright yellow fine Merino where the orange flesh would have been cut away on a real pumpkin.

Then it was time for the orange fibre!  Gosh, I love the shading!!  It's "Orange" Brecknock Hill Cheviot from akara.

I went through my stash of pumpkin stems and found this one that suited him well.  I drilled a hole into the base and screwed in a skewer.  The skewer was then jammed into the top of the pumpkin (with the help of an awl) and it's quite secure.

It took some time to cover the entire pumpkin with the orange and in the meantime I played around with what I could use for eyes.  I had bought ping pong balls for another project but now they seemed the perfect choice for this guy!  I added small black plastic Teddy Bear eyes with posts and used the holes in the posts to attach strings that could be used to secure the eyes... but they are in the sockets pretty good and it's fun to move the eyes around so I didn't attach the strings.

But he was looking too friendly for my liking... what to do?

I started to experiment with colors and this combination seemed to bring out the creepy in my Jack!

Along with some pumpkin carving plastic teeth and the real stem, Bump became a first class Jack o'Lantern!  

We felt very safe on Hallowe'en with Bump guarding our house.