Welcome! I'm Holly Chayes.

This online space has been around in one form or another since 2010, it focuses on making, creativity and living a curious life, plus a lot of clothing.

Some of the projects I've worked on in the past 10+ years include...

Talking About Clothes with Holly Chayes

An interview podcast that's all about clothing (and also, not *really* about clothing at all). Find all the details and listen to conversations about comfort, style, change and shopping here. Or search for Talking About Clothes with Holly Chayes wherever you listen to podcasts.

Who Wears Who?

A personal style coaching and content practice devoted to helping you own and wear your clothes intentionally, instead of being worn by them. Discover your own style guidance, and learn more about the practice of intentional style at WhoWearsWho.com

The Self-Made Wardrobe Project

Predecessor to Who Wears Who, a year-long challenge in 2014/2015 where I only wore clothes I made. That year would have been a lot easier if the clothes had magically made themselves. Learn more about The Self-Made Wardrobe Project and explore the archives here.

The Shawl Geometry Book Series

Enough shawl shapes to keep you knitting for a lifetime. A multi-year exploration of math, shape and space in knitting, where I documented traditional shawl shaping, and iterated on those traditions to create new recipes of shawl shaping. Ultimately this lead to 75+ shapes, and 400+ pages of common and uncommon shawl shaping instructions. This project was inspired by a dozen individual shawl designs, each encapsulating a love of geometric lace design. You can find The Shawl Geometry Series here.

 

Thank you for being here with me. –Holly

The right to-do list for the right job

Here is an incomplete collection of my go-to to-do lists. My relationship to my to-do list changed completely when I realized there were different styles of to-do lists I could use. Different types of lists for different types of projects, or purposes, or days. Sometimes the point of my to-do list is focus, sometimes it’s productivity, sometimes it is merely to have a record of the day. Here is an incomplete collecting of the types of to-do lists I use and how I think about them: As always, use what works, leave what doesn’t. Classic to-do list: This is what I assume people mean when they say a “to-do list.” Purpose: task tracking and management. Format: a list of things that need to be done. There may or may not be some sort of organization or prioritization. Maybe all the tasks that involve the same project or person or area...
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Even flowers take time to wake up.

A musing on not fighting the morning. I was texting with a friend about fighting to wake up in the mornings. She said “kind of incredible what I can get done when I don’t fight getting out of bed…”. I agree, and yes getting going is easier when I’m not fighting myself. The sink in my bathroom sits in front of a window that overlooks a magnolia tree. It is a delightful view to have while brushing your teeth. All February and March I have been fascinated by this tree’s readiness to create buds in the warm days between snow falls and freezing temperatures. Again and again, little fuzzy capsules appeared on the ends of the branches. Finally, in mid April, they began to open. In ones and twos soft pink petals broke out of their fuzzy capsules and began unfurling. This morning, some of these flowers looked like sea...
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When is a creative project done? And is that even the point?

If we can’t always get every project to a state of wholeness, what is the end? When is a creative work finished? And is that different than done? And are those distinct from complete? This question was sparked by that art is merely abandoned quote, often attributed to da Vinci. “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” – Leonardo da Vinci (maybe) Creative projects: finished vs done vs complete When it comes to “done” or “finished”, I think those states are declared. But I do think you can sense when a creative project is “complete.” When there is nothing left to add, and nothing left to remove, the work has a wholeness about it. And I don’t know how to describe the feeling any more accurately at the moment than: it’s kind of like when a lemon curd sets, or when an ice cube melts. It’s not quite ready, not quite...
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