A Championship Was Born

It all started back in 2004 when two friends found themselves with a great distance between them, a strong sense of competition and a need for a purpose to their carving. I mean seriously, when you really step back and think about the absurdity of taking a perfectly good vegetable, cutting open the top, taking out all of the insides, insisting on cooking the part that you would normally throw away, spending hours labouring over a carving, then lighting a candle in what was a perfectly good pumpkin only to throw it away at the end? Seems stupid now doesn't it?

Think if we did that with watermelons...

Well it's not. It's tradition, it's creative, it's fun and it's totally wasteful, but we'll overlook that last one.

So the tradition began as a photo contest, as the opportunity to judge each others pumpkins in person wasn't possible. The first year was a bit of a wash. I think I carved 'Happy Birthday' in mine and Leanne carved a tugboat. Either way we both thought we won and having Leanne's roommate as a judge seemed highly controversial. So in 2005 we made some rules. We are engineers, logical thinkers, we like rules. Oh and we got impartial judges - our Mom's.

2005 saw me take the prize with my mathematical genius of carving out the symbol "π" in my pumpkin. Leanne complained it wasn't original.

2006 the competition was opened up to a select group of invitees and rules about 'traditional carvings' only came out, probably the result of someones bitterness.

We had three entries that year. And although the exact words of the invitation said "you won't win if you carve Santa clause no matter how good it is" yet we still had an entrant that carved a light bulb and named it ironically "bright idea". Not sure who's bright idea it was to break the rules but it cost them the competition.

In the end the 2006 Championship was won by Leanne with what appeared to a pumpkin that she had actually set on fire!!

2007 was a real turning point, nine (9) entries were accepted, more than just our Mom's and a neutral third party voted and the theme of 'Spooky' was thoroughly explored from all different angles. The traditional pumpkin face still dominated but the winner was a clever use of "(picture of) spoon -on + (picture of) key" with a very scary looking axe wielding stump won over the judges and a repeat Champion was born. An honorary mention for creativity went to the international entry showing the very spooky scenario of the American Flag planted in a map of Europe. Oh and a trophy was hand made, not carved, but screwed and glued and varnished.

So that takes us to this years competition and it was another doozy! This year's theme was 'Wicked', however you wanted to take it as meaning, that was what it meant.
Look forward to the World Pumpkin Carving Championship Entries for 2008!!