Divide Bravo Six

You've seen this one before. The difference is in the structural math. In the past year I've been clarifying my designs to more accurately demonstrate their visual properties, and take full advantage of the individual yarns used in each iteration. This pursuit has had me changing needle sizes, increasing stitch counts, doubling up yarn… all sorts of things. I have a penchant for over-analysis.



Basically it's bigger. The structural math from Bravo Five has been applied to the original navy version. This is the last of this particular italian wool yarn, so it's the final one in this color. I have just enough for one more (for me). But yeah: bigger. Stitches per row has been increased, and this added about three fourths of an inch to the overall length. I think this one needed it because these thicker yarns don't slouch all that much.

Now I need to start focusing on the higher gauge stuff for Spring. With February looming, I need to start work on the Reflect Series, and it's going to be nice working with all the thread weight merinos I've been hoarding all winter.

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Shear Alpha Two

I've mentioned a few times before how the Alphas of each series define the parameters. But over the past year I've looked at Shear Alpha and thought it could be better. It could demonstrate the structural foundations of the series more eloquently. The goal of my alphas is to show the most basic representation of the design, but I think this one was a little too basic, so I redesigned it.



Firstly the structural math has been tweaked. I have increased the stitches per row (SPR) while dropping down one needle size. The row counts have also been clarified, as they were a bit unstructured before. Due to the SPR increase, the row totals increased, resulting in an increase in total length (about 1/2 an inch). This slightly higher gauge has improved the stitch quality tremendously while the added length contributes more slouch.



The other more obvious change is the addition of garter stitch ribbing on the trefoil crown. Something I had said in the blog post I wrote about the original Shear Alpha was that the crown section was also an area to add stitch variation. Yet the alpha had none, so this addition to the design was essentially addressing that.

Visually speaking there doesn't appear to be much of a change aside from the crown section. It makes the design much more striking, but I can't help geeking out about the smaller, structural clarifications that push my craftsmanship forward.

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