Fleeting thought #7 {Fallen leaves & favoured pastimes}

On October 25, 2024November 2, 2024 By ArtyMissKIn Fleeting thoughts, Photography4 Comments

Hey friends,

If you’ve never been here before then welcome!!

Today I wanted to share the seventh Fleeting Thought with you. Its been a while since my last one of these, so here goes…

Autumn is just lovely isn’t it?

The sound of the geese flying south for the winter – or the Starlings congregating in their murmurations, where I live is actually quite close to a forest that thousands of starlings live in the winter, every day at around seven o’clock morning and night you can hear them flying overhead you can literally set your watch by them! The parks and woodlands are filled with warm, beautifully mesmerising colours – even though the weather is less on the warm side! You can get your jumpers out and it’s okay to drink hot chocolate at lunch time.

Also pyjamas, pyjamas seem to always feature more in the autumn/winter months…the anti-social introvert in me loves a jammies day, especially if I’ve got a good book to read or an embroidery to finish.

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Ore Stained Landscape {One frame}

On October 18, 2024January 24, 2025 By ArtyMissKIn Photography

Hello my Friends!

I’ve got a new One frame to share with you this week, I recently spent the day at a place called Wheal fortune – which is an old Cornish mining sight used for mining copper and tin up until the 1880’s.

Anyway, its been an age since I posted a landscape shot (as opposed to a tree shot) and this was such an amazing setting to be in. The mining systems in Cornwall are incredible – this is actually where the pollutants washed away and seeing how the ores have stained the landscape through human activity is weirdly heavy on the soul.

It does however make a beautiful landscape to photograph – it kinda reminds me of a Bob Ross painting (he was an oil painter in the 80/90’s and an all round nice guy) he liked to paint happy little trees…I’m very much of the opinion of in life always try to be a bit like Bob Ross!

I love the layers of this image, there’s the reflective water, the red/orange stained rocks which moves into the bright and rich tones of green and a moody sky. The views of the whole site were both amazing and horrific – its comes as a shock when you see how we (as humans) are willing to destroy the landscape in search of metals and the damage it leaves behind.

That’s it for this week, I hope you like the little slice of landscape serenity. How is the weather where you are? Next weeks post is shaping up to be a new surprise Butterfly tale!

Thank you so much for reading this post, and I wish you a prosperous week ahead!

An Early Autumn Flowershoot

On September 20, 2024October 25, 2024 By ArtyMissKIn Photography

Hey friends!

We’ve been blessed with a few extra days of summer and I’ve been holding onto them as much as possible.

I was sitting outside a couple of days ago, listening to the bees buzzing when I suddenly noticed how many of my plants are purple! So I thought why not enjoy the last few rays of perfect sunshine and decided to go on a garden flower safari and I wanted to take you guys along with me so you can enjoy the relaxing atmosphere and pretty plants and a few bugs too!

Starting off my flowershoot are these tiny purple daisies, I think they’re called Michaelmas daisies (a type of aster) and are a tough perennial that I don’t remember actually planting, but they’re so pretty poking out from underneath/behind other flowers that I’m not going to disturb them.

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Raising Red Admiral Butterflies

On September 13, 2024October 25, 2024 By ArtyMissKIn Conservation, Photography2 Comments

Hey friends! I’ve got a new Butterfly tale to share with you, as over the last couple of months I’ve been raising a troupe of super friendly common garden butterflies.

Red Admirals (Vanessa atalanta) are a quick flying regular migrant to these shores and beginning each Spring flocks of Red ads travel northwards from North Africa and mainland Europe. The females that arrive here lay their eggs on common ol’ stinging nettle and from July onwards we have these lovelies to look at…although they overwinter here as well, and I saw them in the area from as early as February.

I love these butterflies they are so pretty and always happy to pose for photos if I’m quiet enough. This year I was lucky enough to find a few little batches of eggs on some of the purpose grown nettles in the garden and I fostered just a small amount of them (literally just a single leaf) and moved them into my butterfly house. Before digging them up a fresh nettle to live on.

Which is a bit weird when I think about it now.

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Magnificent Forest Dweller {One frame}

On September 6, 2024 By ArtyMissKIn Photography6 Comments

Hello my Friends!

Can you believe it, we’ve already six days into September?! Before too long the Christmas decorations will be up and we’ll be singing carols!

Anyway, I thought I’d share one of my favourite trees with you this week in a new One Frame. I genuinely think trees are one of the best things about our planet, they do so much for our eco systems and are so easily overlooked or destroyed. This particular one is on one of my favourite hikes in a little out of the way place called Saint Breward.

Its old and gnarly with so many stout branches snaking off in all directions. I love that at some point someone decided to try and make a swing…although I think its was quite a while ago.

One of the things I love about tree-watching is trying to find faces in them and I’ve stared long enough at this one to convince myself that it does have a face (at least eyes and a nose anyway). I also think it would be perfect for a treehouse.

It won’t be long before all of its lovely green leaves turn brown and litter the ground for the long dark of winter.

But it will still be a beautiful tree.

I hope you like this little slice of tree-ish heaven as much as I do, can you see the face in the tree? Thank you so much for reading this post, and have a lovely, nature filled week!

Fleeting thought #6 {hand stitching & reflections}

On August 23, 2024October 25, 2024 By ArtyMissKIn Fleeting thoughts, Photography7 Comments

Welcome back to another edition of my ramblings…how ya doing?! My intention really was to post this last week but I had Covid and I (not to sound dramatic) thought I was dying, literally I couldn’t get out of bed. Crazy really I managed not to catch Covid during the actual pandemic and then catch it randomly from a lady at church.

I thought I’d share a new Fleeting thought with you this week. A little different to normal this one is more of an insight into my love of embroidery.

If you’ve been following my blog for a while then you might have seen one or two of my embroidered butterfly posts. A lot of people ask me about my butterfly pins as I wear them (normally in my hair) and are often quite shocked when I tell them they are made by hand.

It kinda pushed me to the question.

Why do I embroider things in my spare time?

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Raising Peacock Butterflies

On August 3, 2024October 25, 2024 By ArtyMissKIn Conservation, Photography3 Comments

Hey friends! I’ve been a day behind all week and woke up convinced today was Friday only to discover that not only is it Saturday but also August 3rd (when did that happen!!)

So today I’m (belatedly) posting my first Butterfly tale of 2024!

As over the last couple of months I’ve been raising a little group of one of the prettiest common garden butterflies we get in the UK.

Peacock (Aglais io) are a beautiful red butterfly with giant eye spots (apparently these confuse predators) that seems to be around at all times of the year and is one of our bigger butterflies. The females lay their eggs on common ol’ stinging nettle in May and we have these lovelies to look at about two months later. Something I find amazing is that the females will lay all of their eggs at once which can be up to 500 eggs!!

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Fleeting thought #5 {new tech & random photos}

On July 26, 2024October 25, 2024 By ArtyMissKIn Fleeting thoughts, Photography2 Comments

Hello my friends,

Welcome back…How ya doing? I actually meant to post this a couple of weeks ago but life got in the way.

So, this is the fifth Fleeting Thought its been like a couple of months since the last one and I kinda feel I need a drum roll to start this post off…ready…I’ve finally taken the plunge and upgraded my camera!! Which is super exciting!!! Sadly my trusty L340 gave up on me, so this post is a little bit of my feelings and a tiny (sort of) review mixed with some random photography experiments.

Lets do this…

I haven’t felt the need to upgrade my camera before and have used my faithful Nikon Coolpix L340 since it was released – I’ve always liked how easy it is to use and the photo quality is pretty good (unless you try to zoom too far) but it never really let me down…I must’ve taken over 100,000 photographs with it!

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Old Forest Tunnel {One frame}

On July 5, 2024 By ArtyMissKIn Photography4 Comments

Hey Friends!

I’ve got a new One Frame to share with you this week, I recently came across this old tunnel, which runs under a no longer used railway…isn’t it the coolest thing!

Something I’ve always wanted to do was take a photograph from one end of a tunnel looking towards the other end (don’t know why its just one of those random moments on my photography wish-list) and this tunnel was perfect! It had stalagmites and ivy and smelled strongly of bat, but was so pretty…weirdly it was sunny at the far end but raining where I was standing.

It felt pretty magical, and I couldn’t help but imagine Middle Earth was waiting at the other end!!

So yeah, that’s it for this week, remember the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t always a fire. Hopefully next weeks post is either gonna be a new embroidered butterfly or possibly a Fleeting Thought.

Thank you so much for reading this post, and I wish you a prosperous week ahead!

Little things that run the world! {Insect week 2024}

On June 28, 2024October 25, 2024 By ArtyMissKIn Conservation, Photography6 Comments

Hey friends! How are ya?

This week has been insect week one of my favourite weeks in the whole year! Insect week – which is run by the Royal entomology society is a fantastic opportunity to learn more about bugs and creepy crawlies! This year I thought I’d share seven photos of seven different types of bugs I’ve recently seen.

I don’t claim to have anywhere near the skillset of a professional photographer and am generally really pleased if my subject hasn’t flown/crawled away before I’ve had a chance to take a few photographs! Some of these are better than others but the thing about photography (in my opinion) is that it doesn’t always need to be perfect, just having fun is key!

Kicking off Insect week 2024 are these cute little green leaf bugs, something I find amazing with bug photography is that they always look so much bigger than in real life, these little guys are actually on the head of an ox eye daisy.

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