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

no knitting means no mistakes (yet)

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.   Some weeks you measure your knitting in inches, and some weeks you’re ecstatic to knit 2 rounds. This week was the latter. If you look really carefully, you can see a couple rounds of pink that weren’t there last week, but that’s about all that’s changed. Except! Shawl Geometry II is here! It’s the second book in the Shawl Geometry Series, with complete instructions for 19 uncommon, unusual and unique shawl shapes. You can get all the information about the book, including a list of all the shapes included, and how to purchase it, here.   If you’d like more WIP Wednesday posts, from other bloggers, visit Tami’s blog. No related posts.

Sneaky Friday fell off a cliff

So last Friday fell of the cliff into the ocean and sank to the bottom. I’m sure of it. It was Thursday, then all of a sudden it was Saturday. Because Friday is a sneaky one. But two weeks meant there was lots of shawl progress. From this to this. A post about swatching, loving it, hating it, and taking the shoulds out of it. I adore swatching, but I think that’s because I use it as a way to play and experiment with my knitting. I don’t see it as something I have to do, or something I should do. Swatching is just another tool to learn about your knitting. I don’t knit a million swatches for every project or design. Hell sometimes I don’t even knit one swatch before I start a design. Sometimes I just wing it, and hope that what I’ve learned from previous projects and...
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future fried brain knitting mishaps

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.   I’m always amazed I  make more progress something when I’m a) only working on 1 project, and b) actually spending time knitting. Who knew.   I’ve been alternating working like crazy to get Shawl Geometry II ready, and episodes of West Wing + knitting when my brain is too fried to function. At this point I’m really glad I chose a very logical stitch pattern for this shawl, but am still keeping an eye on the chart, hoping to prevent any fried brain knitting mishaps. Of course now that I’ve said that…   Anyway, I’ve been working on getting Shawl Geometry II ready to release. It’ll be available next week, but I’m offering...
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