Guys

I have had a pretty intense week at work so hope that you, like me, will enjoy spending today just looking at some pretty pictures in today's lavishly illustrated Fem Friday.

Were you aware that Tove Jansson, celebrity introvert and creator of the Moomins, illustrated a Swedish edition of The Hobbit? It's as delightful as you think it's going to be:

https://vainvaihe.tumblr.com/post/185061737838/reptilmastaren-did-you-know-that-moomin-creator

Staying on a literary theme, how about this NYRB cartoon about Iris Murdoch? It encapsulates much of what I love about Murdoch, I know she is not for everyone but this comic explains in a very nice way why she very much is for others, and why she is for me:

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/07/15/the-magic-of-iris-murdoch/

Finally, as well as being a gifted creator of lovely children's books, Beatrix Potter was an avid mycologist and, for want of a better term, mushroom illustrator. Enjoy all of this:

Beatrix’s interest in drawing and painting mushrooms, or fungi, began as a passion for painting beautiful specimens wherever she found them. She never saw art and science as mutually exclusive activities, but recorded what she saw in nature primarily to evoke an aesthetic response. She was drawn to fungi first by their ephemeral fairy qualities and then by the variety of their shape and colour and the challenge they posed to watercolour techniques. Unlike insects or shells or even fossils, fungi also guaranteed an autumn foray into fields and forests, where she could go in her pony cart without being encumbered by family or heavy equipment.

https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/07/28/beatrix-potter-a-life-in-nature-botany-mycology-fungi/

Have a beautiful chilled weekend, pals.

A xx.