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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