I spent a lot of time in calculus drawing soccer balls from different perspectives. It's an interesting geometry problem to map a flat surface onto a sphere. Anyway I didn't have much time so, with a basic idea of what the cutting pattern would be, I figured out how big the pentagons and hexagons would have to be to make sure they envelope the whole squash. I did two minute test map with dry-erase markers- it worked!

Finally I started carving. I always cut the bottom out of the pumpkin instead of the top- it makes it easier to light the candle and looks way the heck sweeter. Cleaning the pumpkin out is a fantastically important step. I shaved the walls down to about 2.54cm (ha ha.) thickness, swelling to 3.5cm at the base for stability and strength. I had to modify the map to make the top hexagons a little bigger to make the stem fit well- no trouble, it just meant the bottom would be a little squashed (ha ha.). I cut the pentagons out starting near the stem, then around the radius and finally the bottom row and the three out of the base piece. A great trick is to cut an angle out of the pumpkin flesh allowing light to pass straight through. That's how I get such clean projections (you can make all kinds of projections on walls around your pumpkin, likes bats, ghosts, squirrels or T4 Phage!) Remember how I was so picky about the pumpkin wall thinkness? That's because I wanted the lines I cut out of the skin to glow. Looks great!

Well I've said more about pumpkins than I usually do. If you're looking to make a fútbol pumpkin just remeber that the length of the edges of the hexagons and pentagons are all the same. The distance across a hexagon, tip to tip is twice the length of an edge. If you have any other questions here's a useful website that I think you'll enjoy