Embroidered Butterfly #20 & 21 {Meadow Brown & Gatekeeper}

On March 21, 2026 By ArtyMissKIn Art, Needlework BugsLeave a comment

Hey friends!

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.

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!

Floral folklore #3

On March 7, 2026March 21, 2026 By ArtyMissKIn Photography2 Comments

Hello my friends!

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.

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Meadow Brown vs Gatekeeper!

On February 28, 2026March 21, 2026 By ArtyMissKIn Conservation, Photography

Hey friends!

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 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).

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Embroidered Butterfly #18 & 19 {Ringlet & Mountain Ringlet}

On February 7, 2026February 16, 2026 By ArtyMissKIn Art, Needlework Bugs9 Comments

Hello my friends!

A couple of weeks ago I posted some photos of Ringlet butterflies that I took during last years gloriously sunshine filled summer and compared them looks-wise to their much rarer mountain dwelling cousins (who I’ve yet to see).

It was so lovely seeing such a large amount of these butterflies just living their best life out in the wild!

So I decided to make both a Ringlet and a Mountain Ringlet to add to my increasing collection of embroidered butterflies…

Ringlet (the bigger one) – #18 on my embroidered butterfly challenge – are a member of the ‘brown’ family of butterflies and are an unassuming light brown to almost black butterfly with little decorative black eye-spots, with a wingspan 48mm (male) 52mm (female) so in keeping with my twice life size scale my needlework Ringlet has a wingspan of about 10.5cm.

The much rarer Mountain Ringlet (the smaller one) – #19 on my embroidered butterfly challenge – is much smaller than their cousins, with a wingspan of 35mm (male) and 38mm (female) and are much darker brown with orange rimmed eyespots. Even when doubled my Mountain Ringlet still only has a tiny 7cm wingspan!

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Ringlet butterfly photography!

On January 24, 2026February 16, 2026 By ArtyMissKIn Photography, Conservation2 Comments

Hello my friends!

I hope you’re well!

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.

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Looking back on 2025 {reviewing the year!}

On January 3, 2026February 16, 2026 By ArtyMissKIn Photography2 Comments

Hey friends!

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.

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Creating a caterpillar nursery (Red ads & Commas)

On October 11, 2025October 18, 2025 By ArtyMissKIn Conservation, Photography2 Comments

Hello my friends,

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.

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Embroidered Butterfly #17 {Clouded Yellow}

On September 20, 2025October 18, 2025 By ArtyMissKIn Art, Needlework Bugs7 Comments

Hey friends!

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.

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Clouded Yellow {new butterfly experience}

On August 29, 2025October 18, 2025 By ArtyMissKIn Photography

Hey friends!

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.

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Embroidered Butterfly #16 {Marbled White}

On August 23, 2025October 18, 2025 By ArtyMissKIn Art, Needlework Bugs4 Comments

Hello my friends!

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.

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