I'm very process oriented which might be another term for stubborn, but I'm not sure. If you tell me the stove is hot, I'm compelled to touch it simply to find out for myself. Nothing against you or your experiences, but I won't know until I experience it. Today, I learned two things: 1) gourds are really easy to drill through. I set my dremel on low and used the smallest drill bit and bzzzzt. You can see the effort (or lack of) in the picture below; 2) the gourd pictured was stained using leather dye from Ten Seconds Studio over a week ago. I tested it with a small Q-tip dipped in water and learned that leather dye has to be heat set too. The light oval is where I used the Q-tip.

I drilled holes around the perimeter of the piece below so I could attach pine needles. I may do more decoration on the body, but I'm not sure yet. I am still just practicing.