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

Review: Cascade Yarns “Forest Hills”

13 Jan 2014

Reviews

I picked up a new lace weight yarn at my LYS the other day, started knitting with it, and thought it would be fun to do a quick little review. The yarn is Cascade Yarns “Forest Hills,” a 51/49 silk/merino, lace weight yarn. With 785 yards (717.5 meters) to a 100 gram (3.5 oz) ball, the yardage isn’t bad, and you can definitely get a shawl from one ball. My LYS had it for $21 a ball, so it’s not a bad price either. It’s 51% silk 49% merino, (not sure why they didn’t just do a 50/50 blend) so it’s very soft, and drapey with pretty good stitch definition. It’s a two ply yarn and despite the silk has a very nice body for a lace weight yarn. Unlike some lace weights it doesn’t feel like you’re holding nothing, which is really nice when you’re knitting with it. The...

first shawls of the new year

10 Jan 2014

General Stuffs, Hello Friday

I might have accidentally cast on two more shawls the other day. But one’s on a US 7 (4.5mm) and one’s on a US 5 (3.75mm) needle, so they’ll go fast and don’t really count. Right? No related posts.

Taking Stock

08 Jan 2014

what's in the works, WIP Wednesdays

I’m always working on some project or another, and most weeks I talk about what I’m working on Wednesdays as part of Tami’s WIP Wednesday project. You can see past WIP Wednesdays … right this way. What’s in progress? Somethings you’ve seen before: but it hasn’t come out of it’s project bag since you last saw it. Some totally new things: -a simple elegant circular purple shawl -a coat, which I kind of done because it’s been damn cold –swatches for the next Shawl Geometry book about mutant shawls, at least the swatches aren’t green this time 😉 -a non-sucky about page, which is harder than it sounds -the pattern for this shawl went to my technical editor Monday. What’s coming up next? -a new blog series about binding off, specifically for shawls -writing the pattern for this shawl -writing the mutant shawl geometry book Announce! Announce! I...

Welcome! I'm Holly Chayes.