Out and About

Some wee bits and bobs from the past couple weeks, and I have been trying to get out and do things even with my busy work schedule so I was really happy when Beth invited me out to lunch. the Edinburgh Farmers Market was celebrating 15 years and chefs from round the capital were showcasing lunch menus for £3, there were loads of different bar-be-que's and slow cooked roasted pork, so I was delighted to find the Gardener's Cottage (I believe, I should have taken a moment to take a picture of their stall) but the herbed potato salad and as much side salad as you pleased, with the elderflower cordial were lovely, just what you would want on a hot day. Lunch was then finished off rather indulgently with a Creme Brulee from The Crema Caravan, burnt while you order, with salted caramel and brownies to top it off. So hopefully the Farmers Market has another birthday bash, because that lunch was amazing.

And secondly for a lovely lady at my works leaving do we went to the Edinburgh Zoo Nights event, So there was animals drinking and dinosaurs, what more would you want. I have been waiting a wee bit to post this until their facebook posted a couple photos that I knew we were in, but they haven't appeared and knowing how I blog, that wouldn't be posted for years to come if I didn't pop those up just now. So I technically count this as visit number 3, but I wish I would have brought a better camera.

June Drawings

As I said in my last post, I have been drawing, and quite a bit too. The top one is based on the stories of Baba Yaga, and Dominika helped me with the Russian Cyrillic. I am hopefully going to start painting the kiwi this week as well as the koala paw. I am really excited how the paw came out as I took the reference photo a couple weeks ago when Hayley and I went to the zoo. The paw just looked perfect for drawing. And the mole makes sense if you know Kris, its part of his nickname, and it was his birthday. So here are a few different things I have been working on from india ink, to just plain sketches, and watercolours, I have been a wee bit busy with it.

I am also on instagram and I post my drawing more semi regularly there so if you want to find me there it is @courtenaydickson, but if semi monthly is enough for you don't worry, so far it looks like I am keeping to that schedule!

Oh ya and I promised an update on my tattoo,

Zoo Take Two

So as usual it has been ages since I last posted, and it is going to be a running theme for this year I hope that what gets me posting again is going to the zoo. As I said before, I have a years membership to the zoo, courtesy of my lovely sisters, and I have now used it for a second time. Hayley and I went today particularly because of the baby penguins that are hatching at the moment, so we didn't want to miss them. The weather was not looking good at all this morning but seeing as I had my pass, we didn't want to cancel, the penguins won't stay wee forever. So we thought it would be worth it even if it did thunder and lightning as predicted as long as we say the main animals we both wanted to see. And as you will see the weather did vary today, we had almost everything except thunder and lightning. It went from warm and sunny to hailing and raining and back to sunny multiple times, but we lucked out and were under shelter for the most part when things went bad. 

Something I nearly forgot about was the Dinosaurs exhibit they put in at the top of the hill, we didn't think we would make it all the way up there but when we did we were surprised to see how good the exhibit was, I didn't expect them to move so much and make noises as well. It was a lot of fun to go through, and made me think of the Royal Tyrrell Museum back in Drumheller, but with a bit more whimsy. There was even a dinosaur there called Edmontonia which was discover in Edmonton, funnily enough, but really made me think of Canada, which was a lot of fun.

So all in all another successful day at the zoo, and now for the photos, I expertly whittled them down from 92 so you wouldn't be scrolling forever.