Weekend reading and and iris in colour pencil

What a warm day it was on Friday!  I was only at work in the morning so afterwards I went to the library and stocked up on some weekend reading.

So from the bottom upwards:
I have read the other books in the Sidney Chambers series by James Runcie.  I was waiting for the next one to come out so rather than buy it I decided to request it from the library.  I love the very English cosy mystery style of his books.
I read my first Fern Britton a couple of weeks ago and enjoyed it; its very entertaining chic lit.
The Max Tudor series by GM Malliet is great; this is the fourth one and I am looking forward to seeing how the Church of England is going to cope with their detective vicar in a relationship with a neo-pagan. 
I have never read Peter Mayles 'A Year in Provence'  and decided to give it a try.
The 'Yorkshire Shepherdess' by Amanda Owen is brilliant; my dad was a Yorkshire man and I can hear his voice in a lot of the dialect that is quoted in the book.  I have finished it but needed to take it back out at the library so the Engineer could finish reading it.  If you loved James Herriot you will enjoy this autobiography of a fan who decided she wanted to be a farmer. 
Death in Paradise was brilliant when it was on the TV, those warm sandy beaches and sunshine.  Sigh!  So let's see if the books are any good, starting with A Meditation on Murder.
Guy Martin?  He seems like a genuine man who is just a bit bonkers and very funny with it.
So I've got lots of reading to do.  I might chop up some nibbles and sit in a shady part of the garden with a cup of tea whilst I read.  One of the things I will start with are strawberries.  My strawberry plants have produced fruit and one of them has now ripened.

The strawberry tower is working well.

Yum.

It will be chopped up and used in my breakfast.

I haven't quite finished my iris yet but its looking ok.  I have made a couple of errors though: firstly I really struggled with one petal; if you look closely you can see where I have lifted out colour and reapplied, but the paper is now damaged and I cannot add anymore pigment to it.  I still need more depth and my edges need to be more defined as its not easy to see individual petals.  Oh well, once again I have learned a lot from doing it.  Add the depth early on. 

 

I started a new project today and I am quite excited about it; its a botanical drawing in which the subject is the correct size but next to it is the same subject over sized.  Its quite a challenge and I've just got to the "What on earth am I doing"? stage.  I will share it with you when I am a little further along.