[kittehkat]

So, I've got a question. I tried starting my carving extravaganza last night, but there was something crazy about the pumpkin I was using. I scooped out the insides and got the whole large pumpkin down to about an inch in thickness, and then becan poking the stencil out and sawing my little heart out; it was the Charlie stencil, which I figured it'd be fine if it started rotting a little, because that movie was creepy, anyhow.

Well, here's the thing: the insides were weird, anyhow, because they came apart like spaghetti squash, in little chunks of deep-rooted flesh. Once I started carving, and punching out the chunks of the face in smaller pieces, it pulled out massive amounts of the backing, no matter how well I sawed through it. It ended up ripping out the attached orangey parts in the front, which it shouldn't have been, and Charlie died. He ended up meeting the lovely trash can and left me sad and dejected.

Now, I bought all my pumpkins at the same place and about the same time; any suggestions on gutting? Maybe I should go thinner on the front part? I'm just kind of paranoid to try to do that since deeper scooping was shredding the walls unevenly. Help!?

[mesmark]

Did you pull out all the strings and soft meat?

I usually shave down or scrape out everything until I get to the hard meat of the pumpkin. Then I worry about thickness (or don't.)

[kittehkat]

Yeah, just the hard meat was too thick, still (about 1.5 inches thick), so I tried to shave that down and it wouldn't go down without totally ruining the inside of the pumpkin.

[Pumpkin King]

I carved a few pumpkins were the insides were like string spaghetti, which makes them pretty difficult to clean without destroying the pumpkin in the process. I think they are just a certain variety that have this consistency.

[Joey]

I think I ran into a couple of like that the past couple of years. If we're thining of the same thing, then I actually thought that was normal since I ran into so many. Never had any destroy a carving though.

[Mister_JP]

Chances are that was a one-off. I doubt the rest will be the same. I also have had these "stringy" pumpkins, but not to the degree you experienced.

Actually all "jack-o-lantern" type pumpkins have this consistency, it's just the way they grow. But some are obviously much worse than others.