Happy New Year! Remember waaaay back, about a million years ago when the first UK lockdown started on the 23rd March last year? I decided to begin a window display to cheer up passersby out for their goverment-approved hour of exercise.

My goals were:

1. to only use free patterns, so I could share them with everyone. Achieved.
2. use yarn from my stash. I did buy one new ball of green yarn, but otherwise done.
3. make and add a new thing every day until the end of lockdown. Didn’t manage this one. Some things, although small, still took a long time to make, especially if I was designing parts of them. Sometimes I was too tired. And sometimes other stuff took priority.

I shared my progress on twitter, Facebook and instagram, but not here. Since it looks like we’re heading into another lockdown, it’s a good excuse for a roundup of the things I made and the patterns I made them from. There are so many amazing free ones out there, maybe you’ll find something you want to try?

It started when I made a little freestyle rainbow as a symbol of hope, appreciation for the NHS.

It looked pretty small and lonely up there, and this is what gave me the idea for the display. I wanted to make a background first to add other things to. First of all I thought I’d do something bright and flowery, so I tried out this pattern from Once Upon a Pink Moon.

And I loved it. But then I wondered if my other stuff would get lost against the colours and sparkle. So, I decided to look for a leaf motif and do it in white instead. I chose this one. It’s my first time working from a chart, but this one was nice and easy to follow.

It took me a while to get the hang of, a few false starts to find the right size hook, and a fair bit of working and unravelling and re-working to get it to a usable size. So it was day 12 (April 3rd 2020) before I had a big enough piece to hang in the window.

My idea was to grow this by one leaf row every day until it filled the window, and to add one crocheted item every day. I was starting on lockdown day 12, but luckily, I had some things I made earlier that were hanging around in a pot doing nothing.

The butterflies were the result of experimenting with creating my own pattern for them, starting with the simplest possible. The bird, dragonfly and loopy carnation were freestyled.

I made a rose as a background for my white butterfly, using this pattern from Attic24. You could also use this YouTube tutorial from Bella Coco.

At the end of lockdown day 12, I hung it in my window (with some help from my partner, yarn, and a bamboo stick from the garden shed). It looked a lot smaller and more amateurish than I’d wanted, but I hoped the bright colours would still cheer folks up.

I resolved to stick with it and see what it could become.

Pattern summary list:

• Flower motifs taken from Flowery Valance pattern by Once Upon a Pink Moon.
• Leaf lace pattern, see chart in pics above. It is also included as part of this tunic pattern.
• Butterfly from Planet Penny.
• May Rose from attic24, or use this BellaCoco YouTube tutorial.