Hello my friends!!
I'm Katie… a nature loving, butterfly obsessed, artist & amateur photographer with a love for illustration, needlework & conservation.
If you fancy it checkout my website www.artymissk.com
This weeks post is a butterfly centred photography collection.
Admittedly I took these photographs last summer and because of life never got around to posting them so I thought I’d share them now. 2025 was an amazing year for chasing butterflies, the weather was glorious and there were so many more pollinators than the previous year.
I met so many Ringlet butterflies…they were everywhere, Cabilla Wood (an amazing ancient woodland near to Bodmin), the village churchyard, almost every lane I walked down and even in my very own garden. It. Was. lovely.
All in all I took nearly 3000 photographs in 2025…mainly of bugs, nature and my dogs.
Ringlet (Aphantopus hyperantus) are a medium size butterfly with a wingspan of 52mm, they are quite widespread and are most often found across grassland and particularly enjoy the nectar of bramble flowers.
One of the magical tings about this butterfly is that they are often almost black when freshly emerged and slowly fade to a dusky brown as they age. They have small circles (eye spots) on their underwings (which give this butterfly its name) interestingly these spots can vary in number, size, be enlarged or totally non-existent. These markings can be unique to each butterfly or even each ‘group’ of butterflies depending on location in the country.
While butterflies like Red Admiral or Peacock have no lookalikes in the UK, Ringlet have a very close cousin aptly named Mountain Ringlet (Erebia epiphron) which lives on the mountain grasslands of the Scottish Highlands and the English Lake District (above 350m). Sadly I’ve never been lucky enough to spot one of these as they live in quite remote places. Mountain Ringlet is slightly smaller to their cousin and they have orange eye spots instead of black ones.
It was lovely to see such a massive population boom for these rather understated Ringlet butterflies, hopefully this year will be just as good for them.
I think I’m definitely going to have to add both a Ringlet and a Mountain Ringlet to my embroidered butterfly collection soon. Ever spotted the ultra elusive Mountain Ringlet? As always thanks for reading and have a wonderful week!
Ps. If you fancy seeing what a Mountain Ringlet looks like Save Butterflies has an info page about them HERE.
Today I wanted to share my eleventh Fleeting Thought with you. If you’re reading one of my blog posts for the first time (hi/friendly wave) and if your back and happy to read more of my ramblings (massive hug!!).
I haven’t written one of these for awhile, basically if you haven’t caught one of these posts before Fleeting Thought is something I’ve come up with while trying to post more of my feelings and be a little bit more blog-ish, these wordy posts might sometimes include stories or poetry or be a bit random and rambling about various things I think about.
So lets go…
The Christmas decorations have been well and truly taken down and safely packed away for the distant festive season…I don’t know about you but I’m always so sad when the decs come down, the house looks so dull without the Christmas trees (yes I have more than one!) and the outside is still too dark and wet to play outside.
Its the time of the year when the Post-Christmas blues can creep in. A period when the excitement of the season has worn off and we’re all back in the real, slightly grey world.
There are a few ways to combat these feelings of sadness, and I’ve got a number rituals that I like to do to get back into the swing of post Christmas living.
In my humble opinion celebration the little wins and focusing on things you enjoy is the best way to lift your spirit.
Firstly exercise! I know it sounds obvious, but exercise really does help, a few winters ago I bought myself a stationary bike so I could still cycle even when its raining (I love cycling but hate going out in the rain to do so!) and follow some spin workouts but you could pick any exercise as long as you enjoy it – thats the key!!
Secondly, I make a list of all the little odd jobs I need to do around the house, places where paint might need touching up, photographs or art that can be hung up or moving the furniture around in different rooms. At the moment I’m contemplating either painting flowers around the inners of every doorframe in the house or painting a ‘floral frame’ to go behind photo or piece of art I’ve hung on the walls…decisions, decisions.
Thirdly, every year I write a journal starting January 1st and ending New Years Eve. I fill it with art/photos/memories/pressed flowers from the year, its always fun to start a new journal. I use the blank page sketchbook from Beechmore Books, I’ve tried several books but Beechmore are the ones I always come back to, they have 156 pages of 160gsm paper (which works with my watercolour brush pens), have lovely vegan leather covers and the book itself opens to lay flat. They last me the whole year (just about).
And finally, I like to bake (ignoring the amount of food I may or may not have indulged in over Christmas).
I thought I’d share a recipe with you for my absolute favourite peanut butter and dark chocolate cookies. I picked this up on a recipe card in Waitrose years ago its by Martha Collison (she’s clearly a genius and is the Great British Bake Off’s youngest ever contestant!) These cookies get eaten so quickly that sometimes they don’t even have time to cool down!!
I’ve made these for so many people over the years and they always go down a treat. I’m pretty sure they’re like 400 calories a lick so they’re only made on very special occasions.
Obviously they contain peanut butter so they’re a no go for those with allergies (if you or loved ones are allergic please don’t make them) and they contain egg so they aren’t vegan either (but egg substitutes are available). I’m a vegetarian and I tend to use dairy-free whenever I can as I don’t like the taste of cows milk so I use oat/plant based instead and I’ve got a free ranging duck and a chicken for fresh eggs (I try to contribute as little as possible to intensive animal farming). It was just one of those life choices that naturally evolved.
So with that in mind lets bake some awesome cookies…
~
Makes 12 large cookies.
For the biscuit –
50g peanuts (you can skip these)
125g unsalted butter
125g Smooth Peanut Butter
100g Caster Sugar, plus 1 tsp for sprinkling
100g Light brown soft sugar
1 Large Egg
200g plain flour
½ tsp fine salt
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
100g plain chocolate, cut into chunks
The method –
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C, gas mark 4; line 2 large baking trays with baking parchment.
Roast the peanuts in a small roasting tin for 8-10 minutes until golden; leave to cool then roughly chop. (Personally I always skip this step).
Meanwhile, in a large pan, melt the butter and peanut butter over a low heat, stirring to combine; set aside to cool slightly. (You can also microwave it in 30 second bursts for a little less washing up).
Using a wooden spoon or spatula, beat both the sugars into the peanut butter mixture, followed by the egg.
Mix the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda together (in a different bowl), then beat into the wet ingredients until well combined. Cover and chill the mixture in the fridge for 1 hour.
Remove the cookie dough from the fridge and stir through the chocolate and roasted nuts until evenly distributed.
Lightly roll heaped spoonfuls of the mixture (about 65g each) in your hands. Arrange on the baking trays, well spaced apart.
Sprinkle with 1 tsp sugar and bake for 13-15 minutes until spread and golden at the edges. Cool on the trays for 5 minutes, then transfer to a rack to cool completely.
~
Full credit to Martha for creating such an amazing recipe! Her website is HERE!
These are pretty much the naughtiest cookies in the world but they’re tasty, simple and satisfying to make, a real treat when it’s cold and grey outside! I really quite enjoyed writing this – one of my quirks is how much I love baking. As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely week!
I thought I’d post an update of the progress I’ve been making on my embroidered denim jacket as I feel its really moved on leaps and bounds!
Now that I’ve added to naughty daffodils and the elegant Lily and Iris it looks so much more ‘full’.
This denim is so super tough I’ve had to change needles. Where I made the decision to cut away the excess design and re print it so I could literally cut out the flowers I want to include and play with the layout as I go along, has made the process much more enjoyable and gives me the chance to really play with the pattern before its final.
The wildflowers from Disney’s Alice In Wonderland (the 50’s disney cartoon) are literally my favourite part of the movie and I’m particularly pleased with the Lily its been quite a hard shape to try and create depth with and I love how layered the whole image is beginning to look!
There’s only a few more flowers to go, the next part I’m going to be working on is the tulips and sweet-peas to go either side of the rose and I’m contemplating creating some tiny bread-and-butterflies (to kiss the tulips). Weirdly even though I don’t actually have a set design in mind it actually looks how I imagined it would.
I can’t wait to see what it looks like without the stick and stitch paper!
So that’s it for this weeks denim-jacket-project post…I hope you enjoyed it.
As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely week!
Ps. Its really hard to photograph this nicely in its current state!!
I truly hope you had a magical and happiness filled festive period!
Its already the first weekend in January and I’ve made to executive decision to move my post day to Saturday, for a multitude of reasons but mainly that I always seem to be busy on Fridays and then rush posting. So I’m back for 2026 and my New Years resolution is to definitely try and post something every week without fail (a girl can dream right?!) I began 2025 by reviewing the previous years ups and downs and thought I’d try that again to get the ball rolling…
…and explain my total disappearance from the blog.
Ready?
Lets do this…
The biggest highlight of the year/things I did, I decided at the end of 2024 that I was going to learn something new, a language or a musical instrument – I picked up an old violin in a charity shop near to the beach at Perranporth and was totally set on learning how to play it (spoiler: I didn’t). Instead I learnt to drive!! Literally I’m so damn pleased with myself after finding an instructor I actually managed to learn how to drive in exactly six months. My mum has been a legend and was happy to chaperone me in the car every day for an hour or two until I had my test in the middle of October which I passed first time with only 4 minors!! If you’re reading this from the UK you might have heard on the news how hard it is for learners to get tests so I really didn’t want to fail and have to wait months to try again…I put myself under so much pressure which I didn’t need to and I was just so relieved to have the test over with that for about three weeks I was just randomly saying ‘I’ve passed my driving test!’ If I’m really honest it didn’t sink in for about a month and it was weird to not have to go and practise everyday come rain or shine. The post-learning-to-drive burn out is real though, I’ve never been so mentally exhausted and I got into such a tizzy that life could go back to normal and not just focus on this one thing, that I panicked and stopped blogging/a few of my others hobbies, so its quite nice now that I feel I can pick up all of that again.
I still can’t believe the freedom I’ve gained by being able to just get in the car and go anywhere I feel like. (In the city I always used public transport but now I live in the middle of nowhere I really need a car!).
Even when friends were asking what I wanted for Christmas all I could say was ‘I’ve got my drivers license what more could I want!’.
Literally I’m so pleased with myself.
I also joined insta which in itself isn’t a big deal but I don’t really use social media so thats been fun to learn. (If you’re on insta I’m @artymissk). Here’s 9 of my favourite photos from this year! 2025 was such an amazing year for wandering with the butterflies and being out in the sunshine…hopefully 2026 will be just as good!
Lowlights and sad things, to be honest I’ve genuinely got nothing to moan about from the last year I’m a glass half full kinda girl and I’m truly grateful for the situation I live in, the health of my family is pretty good and there haven’t been any major disasters (beyond my air source heat pump dying but that was in the summer so I didn’t need heating anyway!).
I’ve had a few anxiety attacks which weren’t very nice but I was majorly stressing myself out so it wasn’t unexpected.
Blogging progress, this year has been abysmal, lets not pretend otherwise. I really am intending to put some major effort into my blog this year, I really treasure every like and comment and I really can’t thank my followers enough! So thank you very, very much for sticking with me all this time!
Current events/projects, I’m still working on my two projects at the moment (fun things as opposed to serious life/work goals) I’ve created 17 out of 70-ish needlework butterflies to decorate my house with – these are all twice life-size and in scale with each other…I reckon it will take at least another three years to finish them all!
Then I’m branching out to butterflies of the world!
My second project is to continue creating my own slice of Eden in the garden, its definitely working and there are so many bugs and birds…in the summer I met my very first Clouded Yellow and didn’t even have to leave my hammock. I’m planning to add buddleias, jasmine and I’d quite like a cherry tree for this year. All of my current plants (and weeds) are doing well.
Especially the nettles I think they’re on steroids.
My very first encounter with a Clouded Yellow!
I also don’t think the garden will ever be finished.
No matter what I’m doing and how busy I am I will always be searching the garden for caterpillars to raise, I miss the butterflies so much in winter that I’ve now moved onto raising moths as well (generally they are much easier to care for) even now I’ve got quite a happy population of both Ruby Tigers and Large Yellow underwings, which is exciting.
But over the summer I had massive amounts of success rearing caterpillars of some of our most common butterflies that I raised a whopping total of 269 butterflies, amazingly some of them are currently overwintering in my butterfly house as pupa and will emerge in the spring which starts the whole cycle again, so thats pretty cool.
These are just a few of the butterflies I raised this year –
8 Orange Tips (currently pupating – butterfly tale coming soon!)
91 Large Whites (with 13 more pupating over winter)
4 Peacocks
1 Small Tortoiseshell
18 Painted Ladies
56 Red Admirals
31 Comma
13 Green veined whites (currently pupating – butterfly tale coming soon!)
And 6 Random green fellas that moved into my butterfly house and became pupa (pretty sure they’re one of the brown butterflies – butterfly tale coming soon hopefully!).
Comma caterpillarLarge White caterpillarSmall Tortoiseshell caterpillar
It’s amazing to think that even though it’s winter I’ve still got like 70-ish creatures in my care. I also find it mind boggling that a butterfly that only lives a few weeks in the summer probably spent 6 months or more as a pupa over winter.
The world around me, I’m actively trying to avoid the news, I feel helpless in the face of so much anger and war, politicians talk about what needs to be done and never do anything and I feel I’m such a small cog my efforts will never make any difference, all I can do is pray for peace for those who are suffering and recycle/reuse and try to keep my carbon footprint as small as possible.
Thoughts for the next year, In 2025 I chose to set myself the goal of learning something new…which I actually did! For this coming year I’m hoping to be able to relax a little so I’m not setting any major goals.
Really try to post something on here every week – even if it’s only a random photograph or a poem. This will be a real blogging accomplishment for me – My idea is to try and always be a week or two ahead and actually plan what I’m going to post with enough notice to actually sit and type without rushing on the day! (ya never know, it might work!!).
Do more art – I’ve not really had much time to paint over the last year and it’s something I really miss.
Maybe learn to play the violin I’ve bought – it’s so pretty I hate to see it just sitting on a shelf in my room, but if it doesn’t happen then oh well.
Get out more – now that I’m able to travel at leisure there are so many opportunities to help butterfly conservation across the whole county and I can just hop in the car with my wellies and a packed lunch and go and make a tiny difference to the wild world out there.
And over the summer I’m going to France with my brother on a sibling/BFF trip, to the magical place with the castle thats run by the mouse and his friends (when I was younger people always told me it was super weird to actually being friends with my younger sibling but once we both got old enough we decided the opinions of those people didn’t matter). I can’t imagine not beings best buds with my brother and we both love Disney.
So thats something I’m majorly looking forward to as I haven’t been to Disneyland since I was about 9 years old and my brother was so young he doesn’t really remember it at all!
Also it gives me really good motivation to finish my Alice in Wonderland denim jacket embroidery! New update coming next week!!
Well, I think that pretty much wraps up 2025! I’ve experienced some of the best days of my life, achieved a major life goal and experienced real burn-out. I’ve met some amazing people and seen so many new things. Hopefully you’ll stick with me in 2026…Have you set any goals for the coming year? As always my friends I wish you a happy and prosperous year ahead.
Welcome back to another episode of what-have-I-been-up-to-recently!
This week I thought I’d post an update of the progress I’ve been making on my embroidered denim jacket!
I’m sure it’s going to look awesome when I finally finish it, denim is super tough to embroider but the stick and stitch paper is magic. Once I’d finished the dandelion and dandetiger I decided to cut away pretty much all of the excess design and and reprinted the pattern so I could literally cut out all the flowers I want to included and play with the layout as I go along, its made the process feel much more organic and if I want to move something from A to B it doesn’t mess with the overall design as I’m now making it up as I go along. So that I have plenty of room to manoeuvre I reprinted the whole image on the sticky paper flipped the image over and printed it again which means I’ve got more flowers to play with.
The wildflowers from Disney’s Alice In Wonderland (the 50’s disney cartoon) are literally my favourite part of the movie and I’m so excited to finish this project.
The pansies were actually really hard to do, I did actually completely unpick one as it was looking so evil! (I really don’t recommend trying to unpick on denim) because these flowers are so much smaller than the ones I’ve already finished I decided to outline them in tiny black stem stitches that I could just colour in between the lines which did speed the process up.
The next part I’m going to be working on is the iris and lily, the stem of the dandelion and I’m thinking of adding a couple of naughty daffodils at the bottom.
Hopefully it wont be too long before I post another update to track how everything’s going! So that’s it for this weeks denim-jacket-project post…I hope you enjoyed it.
As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely week!
Ps. Its really hard to photograph this nicely in its current state!!
The leaves are falling, the warm clothes are out – along with my favourite winter boots and there is also a total abundance of ladybug beetles!! Over the last week they’ve literally decided that since the weather has turned chilly its best to go and find somewhere nice to hibernate for the winter…although quite a few of them have made their way into the kitchen. My butterfly house is also filled with them, its been like flying ant day but prettier.
Its been a couple of months since I last posted a One Frame so while I was watching (and wearing) the ladybugs I thought I’d take as many photos as I could in hopes of a few good snaps to share here.
Like this one, I think they’re harlequin ladybugs, but I’m not an expert and I think all beetles are pretty cool. I actually find it really hard to photograph these teeny tiny fellas, so when I get a snap thats in focus I get quite excited!
So with that in mind I really hope you like this ladybug post and are enjoying the beginnings of autumn wherever you are. I’m planning to post an update to my Wonderland flowers denim jacket embroidery next week.
Thank you so much for reading this post, and have a lovely, peace filled week!
I’ll admit the last couple of weeks have got away from me slightly, I genuinely cannot believe how busy I’ve been and at the same time don’t feel as though I’ve achieved anything (if that makes sense!).
Still, I’ve got a new butterfly tale for you this week. All summer I’ve been raising various butterflies (like I do each year!) the garden has been wonderfully filled with Comma (Polygonia c-album) and Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta) caterpillars in the nettle patch that grows under the apple tree in my garden – unfortunately the nettles themselves are giant and literally grow up into the branches of the tree, I try to leave them alone as much as possible but once the spears are over six foot tall I clip them down to the ground and challenge them to grow again!
When it comes to cutting them down I actually check each spear and save the bugs, this year there were so many caterpillars I decided to create a ‘caterpillar nursery’ and try to recreate the nettle patch using potted nettles (yes, I also grown the stingy stuff in pots!).
Red Admirals in particular are always at risk of being attacked by parasitic flies/wasps which is a horrible way for them to die. So I get very excited when I them in the garden.
I’m totally fascinated with caterpillars, Red ad cats are fairly beige when tiny but when fully grown can be either black with a light green stripe or green which I magical! And Commas are little black cats that that become black/white/orange as they grow – its quite a pretty caterpillar, they have such cute antennae.
I’ve been absent for a couple of weeks, theres a lot going on and I’ve had that horrid cold-thing that’s doing the rounds at the moment (not fun!!).
Still, I’ve got a new needlework butterfly to share with you! I’ve genuinely had the best butterfly year ever and encountered so many critters, I’ve even met my very first Clouded Yellow! I always thought I’d have to physically go and search for these butterflies and never in my wildest dreams did I think one would show up in my own back garden and I wanted to create one to add to my ever growing collection of handmade butterflies.
This is #17 on my Embroidered Butterfly challenge – only 59-ish more to go!!! I worked it out if I make one a month it should only take like another four or so years!
Clouded Yellow (Colias croceus) who is one of our regular migrant species is considered to be a large butterfly with a wingspan up to 62mm, they tend to rest with their wings closed which is a shame because they are so pretty.
I’ve got four new photographs to share with you this week, I’m literally having the best butterfly year of my life! It helps that the weather has been amazing and my wildlife garden is more or less finished (it will never be totally finished of course!) But creating a nectar rich garden and letting the space re-wild as much as possible has brought so many new types of butterfly to my garden this year.
Including this little lovely thing, she’s a female (I think) Clouded Yellow butterfly (Colias croceus) who is one of our regular and specular migrant species! They are seen in the UK most years but when the weather is like it has been then these guys are known for mass migrations and create something called a ‘clouded yellow year’, which is cool.
I really hope you’re enjoying the bank holiday weekend if you’re in the UK or just enjoying a nice normal weekend generally!
The week before last I posted all about exploring Penlee Battery nature reserve where I met many, many beautiful butterflies and even a few day flying moths. I really enjoyed being able to spot so many Marbled White butterflies and thought I would create an embroidered version for my collection.
These amazing black and white checkerboard butterflies have a real life wingspan of around 5.5cm and are considered to be a medium size chap! I only created a female as there aren’t too many differences between the two sexes.
My needlework Marbled white has a wingspan of more or less 11cm and she’s #16 of my needlework butterfly quest.
ArtyMissK 
You must be logged in to post a comment.