Holly Chayes

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?

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

shawls, swatches, sweaters

11 Jun 2014

The Self-Made Wardrobe, what's in the works

The pile of yarn from a couple weeks ago, has become a pile of swatches. I’m planning a straight forward stockinette shawl that’s perfect summer knitting, out of this ball of The Verdant Gryphon’s Eidos. And I pulled out an ancient unfinished sweater to work on as part of The Self-Made Wardrobe. No related posts.

6 reasons to swatch

09 Jun 2014

Tips & Tricks

We all know that we should swatch before every project. But most of us don’t. Myself included. Swatching is a tool, just like needles, rulers and books, and not every tool needs to be in every project. But if I have a question, swatching is usually one of the fastest ways to find the answer. (It’s certainly faster than finishing a whole project.) I swatch… … to figure out how large a piece will be. … to see how the final fabric will feel. … to clarify a design. … to have a record of an idea I don’t have time for at the moment. … to try out a color combination. … to learn a new technique. And maybe most importantly I swatch to play. I see swatching as a place to experiment and try new things out with no strings attached. There are certainly “best practices” when it...

A Pile of Yarn

23 May 2014

General Stuffs, Upcoming Projects

Who doesn’t love a big pile of yarn sitting on their desk? From top to bottom, left to right: 1. Reywa Fibers “Bloom” (50%/50& yak/silk) colorway ‘Wild Orchid’ 2. Koigu “Lace Merino” (100% merino) colorway ‘L3667’ 3. Julie Asselin “Merletto” (75% merino/15% cashmere/10% silk) colorway ‘Dapple Grey’ 4. Sweet Georgia “Merino Silk Lace” (50%/50% wool/silk) colorway ‘autumn flame’ 5. Cascade Yarns “Forest Hills” (51% silk, 49% wool) colorway ’16’ (I did a review of this yarn a couple months ago) 6. Fiberspates “Scrumptious Lace” (45% silk, 55% merino) colorway ‘80502’ I agreed to knit a some lace swatches for my LYS, so I have this pile of lace weight sitting on my desk waiting for me to swatch and play with. yay! No related posts.

Welcome! I'm Holly Chayes.