Lily of the Valley Vest

Sometimes a project can make me insanely happy. Knitting this vest, playing around with the stitch pattern and tracking it down became an obsession for me during June. As our world is so interconnected, we can find amazing inspiration from all over the world. I fell in love with the German version of the Lily of the Valley lace stitch pattern, after seeing the gorgeous garments ( http://www.ravelry.com/projects/ifdefelseif/25-top- and http://www.ravelry.com/projects/tatty152/25-top- ), and shawls using this lace pattern ( Lily of the Valley Rosea shawl by Alla Borisova, Raspberry Dream Stole by Dagmara). I found the original pattern motif in a book from 1983 I bought on Ebay ,( pattern here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/maiglockchen-603-115 ) which is in the book:
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/sources/burda-strick-lehr... . As I don't usually knit shawls or dresses, I set about adapting the lace fabric into a vest. Swatching clued me in to the irregularities of the lace pattern as originally designed ( stitch count in one rep goes from 19 to 47), so I tweaked and modified and swatched and re-charted the design to get it to lie flatter in the linen yarn and be easier to knit. Calculating the cast on number was tricky, so I went with my numbers for the Floral vest in the same yarn, and was pleased to find this lace to be roughly the same gauge. Width of each repeat turned out to be a wonderful 5 inches, so aiming for 40 inch sweater gave me 8 repeats to work with, a nicely manageable number. I made the first one a bit longer than my other floral vests ( 96 rows to the underarm instead of 80), and while I liked it, I think I prefer it shorter. I like where the leaves fall on my body., and it was really fun to knit. So, I had to make 3 of them in order to write up the pattern.

I finally published it today, deciding to make it a free pattern because it is only in one size. Hopefully others will enjoy knitting it as much as I did...and I think I might need to make one in black...If you want to knit it, the pattern is available here:
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/lily-of-the-valley-vest.