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
I’ve got a brand new Butterfly Tale for you this week which is always exciting, it actually began last August when I spotted a tiny two leaf wild cabbage growing in my front garden totally at random. I only even really noticed it because a cabbage butterfly was paying it so much attention. When I went out with my watering can to feed my plants I realised that she had laid thirteen eggs on this teeny tiny plantling! I just couldn’t leave it where it was – directly underneath the bird feeder, so I carefully dug up the cabbage and moved it into my butterfly house.
It was only a few days before the eggs hatched and quite quickly they began to eat both leaves of the cabbage, at this point in the year I didn’t even have any other plants to give them so I resorted to buying organic ones from the supermarket! By the middle of September they had grown into these handsome green chaps.
Welcome back to another edition of ‘What have I been up to!’
I figured I should finally introduce myself, because I think it’s nice to be able to know a little bit about the person behind the pictures.
I can’t believe I’ve not done this before, although I really don’t like having my picture taken so thats probably got something to do with it! Basically I made these slides for insta and thought why not post them here too!
Ready here goes…
So hey, my name is Katie and I’m a UK based nature nerd, I’m also a book nerd who likes to do embroidery, paint, and is trying to create a little slice of happiness in my garden. I like raising caterpillars and giving them a safe place to complete their life cycle, which I’ve been doing since I was a kid. I use this account to post pictures of bugs I’ve seen, things I’ve painted or created, caterpillars I’m raising and trees (very important!).
I’d really like to give a special thank you to anyone reading this whether you’ve only just started following me or have been here for a while, it really means the world to have found such a kind corner of the internet.
I really hope you’ve enjoy following along on this journey. As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely week!
ps. Trying to take selfies with butterflies is really hard, you have to be so quick!
Hey friends! Welcome to my third Butterfly tale of 2026!!
Do you remember last year I wrote about my experience over wintering 3 Emperor moth cocoons I found in the garden? They emerged mated like crazy and flew away, well this year I’m continuing that story…
So my three Emperors from last year were a richly coloured male and two gigantic grey winged females, I really fell in love with them and was thrilled that they survived the winter (I found them on a plant that was damaged during a winter storm) I created them an enclosure with different heathers and a giant meadow sweet plant and they were obviously quite happy as the girls laid like 250-300 eggs!
Sadly Emperor moth eggs need really specific humidity and temperatures to develop and although I was hopeful only a single egg hatched. I was gutted to be honest I kinda thought I was going to be releasing an army of them.
Just to point out my butterfly raising disclaimer, I’m only rescuing the ones I can identify as eggs as some caterpillars can be tricky to raise or are protected species. If I don’t trust that I can look after them properly and give them the right food plant/proper environment then my plan is always to just leave them alone.
So my very precious caterpillar began to eat her way around the enclosure. These moths have fascinating caterpillar, each time the caterpillar grows or ‘moults’ a stage in life where they rest for a few days and shed their skin causes significant changes in their appearance.
This weeks post is a little different, today marks the 100th birthday of Sir David Attenborough and while I had many things I was thinking of posting this week (including another butterfly tale!), a tribute to the worlds greatest naturalist on such a momentous birthday seemed poignant.
I then couldn’t think of what I could do to celebrate such a life, I did briefly flirt with the idea of drawing his portrait but just could do him justice, so instead I illustrated a miniature Sir David Attenborough in his signature blue shirt with my favourite quote of his.
Sir David has lived such a long, important life and been one of my heroes for as long as I can remember, he’s given rise to many famous quotes my favourite of which is –
Cherish the natural world, because you’re a part of it and you depend on it.
I’ve always loved nature and I blame Blue Planet – I was hooked as a child and even as an adult actually find his documentaries to be very soothing, caring for our planet takes so little and if we all did just a tiny amount we could change the world.
It was how I started raising caterpillars, I wanted to protect them and figured that if I was feeding the birds it was okay to protect the caterpillars. I’ve never been very good at the naturalist motto of ‘don’t interfere’ in my opinion humanity interfered when we started polluting the rivers and the skies, over fishing and chopping down the trees – we cause enough harm so we’re already involved, trying to help should never be considered a bad thing.
When Wild Isles was released I literally binged the whole thing and then bought the book! Its funny how someone you’ve never met, but known your whole life can alter the way you see the world.
So I do really with all my heart wish Sir David Attenborough one of my heroes a very Happy 100th Birthday thank you for being a true light in the universe. Your tireless love for the natural world has inspired countless amounts of people to care for our world and everything that resides on it.
As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely weekend!
I’ve finally finished my Wonderland flowers jacket embroidery (happy dance).
It looks so much better than I thought it would now that I’ve finally washed away the stick and stitch paper, I did have a moment were I panicked and got scared of rinsing it incase the printed design underneath ran into the threads and stained the lighter colours – which thankfully it didn’t!
In the end I decided to create an arch of bread-and-butterflies to just ‘finish’ the image. They’re quite funky aren’t they!? I worked all of them at once – all the eyes/all the bodies/all the wings etc.
Now that its finished I literally can’t wait to start wearing it! This jacket has taken a solid nine months of work, I’ve used miles of thread and gone through several needles. But I’m so pleased it’s finally finished and the colours look so much more vibrant now it’s been washed.
Also seeing as I’m going the happiest place on earth this summer I can now take it with me! My brother has even bought me a super cute Wonderland themed pair of ‘Minnie ears’ to wear in the park. As a side note I had no idea about disney ear headbands and I just need them!
I’ve already got a new project I’m going to start although I’m hoping it won’t take quite as long as this one has!
So that’s a wrap for my denim-jacket-project posts, and a rather labor intensive project complete…I really hope you’ve enjoy following along on this journey. As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely week!
I’ve got another brand new Butterfly Tale for you this week which is exciting and has been a whole year in the making. When I planted my Honesty seeds last summer I did so in the hope that Orange tips would come and lay eggs in the garden – in 2024 I only found a single egg and cared for her as much as possible, so I was thrilled to find not one but eleven eggs in the spring of 2025!
They were spread across several plants, Orange tips do this because the caterpillars are cannibalistic when small although I’ve never worked out if that means they eat all caterpillars or just their brethren). I sleeved each egg in a mesh bag to keep them safe from predators and checked on them after about three weeks.
Eight of the eggs had hatched into tiny green caterpillars!
Hey friends! I’ve got a new Butterfly Tale for you this week!!
This is very much a surprise butterfly tale, last year I decided to weed the grass out of my birds foot trefoil pots and I found three little cream coloured eggs!
I felt really bad about disturbing them and popped the little stems of grass into an enclosure in my butterfly house with (don’t judge me) a new pot of fine stem grass…thats right I actually potted up grass (my brother thought I’d lost my mind).
After really studying the eggs I guessed they were either going to be Speckled wood/Meadow brown/Gate keeper or a type of grass eating moth – I figured that if they were actually going to eat birds foot trefoil then the eggs wouldn’t have been laid on the grass.
They were really very happy with their pot of grass and before I knew had grown into rather handsome green caterpillars.
Firstly, I skipped posting this last week as the building work needed on my house finally happened and it was so super stressful…I packed up a whole bunch of stuff to clear as much room as I could to be out of the way of the builders and managed to tidy away my laptop charger, for the life of me I couldn’t remember where it was!
Still its over now and my heating is finally working properly!! (Yay!).
A few weeks ago I posted a couple of photos comparing the differences between two of our most common (and overlooked) butterflies Meadow Brown and Gatekeeper. I really love these two butterflies and kinda think they’re like the Sparrow of the butterfly world, brown, unexciting and everywhere. Obviously I wanted to create a needlework version of both of these happy chaps.
I decided to make females of both as there isn’t masses of difference between the sexes.
Meadow BrownGatekeeper
So, Meadow Brown – #20 on my embroidered butterfly challenge. Is basically a brown butterfly with orange patches on the upper wing, identified by the one white dot in its eye-spots. With a real life wingspan of 50mm (male) and 55mm (female) it means my needlework version is around 11cm across.
While Gatekeeper – #21 on my embroidered butterfly challenge. Has much more orange within their wing patterns ad is slightly smaller than Meadow Brown with a real life wingspan of 40mm (male) and 47mm (female) giving my twice life-size version a 9.5cm-ish. Gatekeeper is identified by having two white dots in their eye-spots.
I’m so unbelievably pleased with these two!
I have actually made a Gatekeeper before, way back when I was practicing the design process. Boy have I improved the process is so different now (if you wanna check it out the link is at the bottom!).
As usual it has a very thin stainless steel wire concealed in the edge of the wings to help the keep their shape.
That’s a wrap for this week…two more butterflies down only 51 still to go!! Stay tuned for the next instalment on my butterfly creating adventure. Thank you so much for checking out this post!
Hopefully you’ll be back next week!
Ps. If you want to have a look at my other butterflies they’re HERE!
Psps. My first attempt of an embroidered Gatekeeper butterfly from 2022 is HERE!
Psps (again). Also if you want to see my Meadow Brown and Gatekeeper photos they’re HERE!
As you know I love discovering the quirky myths, folklore and random stories about the plants I’m growing in my garden (I’m a total plant-nerd) and those that I find on my walking adventures. So seeing as it’s been a while since I posted one of these I thought I’d look at three of my favourite plants to see if there’s any fun stories relating to them!!
I love a thistle (Cirsium vulgare) they are plants in the Asteraceae family (which believe it or not is the daisy family) and are noted for having prickly leaves and purple, pink, or white flower heads. I grow many, many thistles in the garden and even a random one thats (for some unknown reason) growing in amongst the grass that I don’t have the heart to mow over.
This week I’ve got a two new butterfly photographs to share with you, you’ve probably seen them in your gardens or local parks, small, unassuming little brown and orange butterflies flitting from flower to flower.
These are two of our most abundant butterflies and usually one or the other win the top spot in Save Butterflies summer citizen science experiment the Big Butterfly Count.
These two types of butterfly look more or less identical…
Meadow BrownGatekeeper
Meadow Brown (Maniola jurtina) is often the most abundant butterfly in many habitats, from gardens to quarries and is even spotted fluttering about even on overcast days, which is unusual as most butterflies are inactive in dull weather. They are a member of the ‘brown’ family and have a wingspan of up to 55mm.
The Gatekeeper (Pyronia tithonus) also known as the Hedge Brown is most likely to be spotted where clumps of flowers grow near gates or along hedges. Gatekeepers are often seen out and about with Ringlets and Meadow Browns and sometimes its quite hard to tell them apart. They are slightly smaller than Meadow Brown with a wingspan of up to 47mm (so theres not a lot in it size wise).
ArtyMissK 
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