Lace knitting and other adventures

Having seen the beautiful lace dress patterns by Sara on Ravelry I decided to get learning lace knitting at last. One of the things I try to do with every knitting project is learn something new, no matter how small that new thing may be. So in a bid to learn lace I chose what I thought was a simple dress pattern with a small lace section from my Mum's pattern collection. It's a Sindy one that was printed in a newspaper sometime in the 70's or 80's from the look of it so it is seriously outdated. It is also huge as Sindy's aren't exactly Blythe sized.

Here's my first go. For a start I managed to rib instead of seed stitch, something I do quite alot for some weird reason, then I struggled on the lace pattern as it turns out that the pattern itself is wrong! I was also fairly rubbish at it but it taught me the following things about lace knitting: Pay close attention to what you are doing and keep counting your stitches. This is an 8 st repeat followed by a purl row so relatively straightforward. The sleeves section are worked with a variety of cast on and cast offs, the pattern also gave the wrong number of stitches for the sleeves so they are bigger at the back than the front. Unfortunately the neckline is also appalling - the cast off on the neck line gives it a really untidy edge. It is also far too big.
I firmly believe (maybe stupidly) that this could be a nice pattern with a total rewrite so I am currently working on a complete overhaul. Given my knitting speed this could take me a very long time!