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

Easter egg in a bad way?

07 Aug 2013

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. Yesterday I waxed poetic about color in shawls. And the other night I started, yet, another one. Not quite sure how I feel about it. I’m wondering if it’s a bit too Easter egg, in a bad way. But I think if I come up with the right stitch pattern, and keep changing up the color sequence, it’ll stay away from boring ugly. fingers crossed. Thoughts? If you’d like more WIP Wednesday posts, from other bloggers, visit Tami’s blog. No related posts.

Color in Shawls

06 Aug 2013

Tips & Tricks

I’m currently totally in love with circular pi shawls, knit with multiple colors. Love knitting them, love looking at them, love designing them. love, love, love. One of the best parts is how you can take two skeins that (on their own) wouldn’t make very sizable shawls, and knit a huge shawl. Anwar is knit out of two skeins of Malabrigo lace, which has good (not astounding) yardage, but the finished shawl is 36 inches (91.5 centimeters) in diameter. Mayur is just two skeins of sock yarn (something I think we all have in our closets or under our beds.) Eirwen on the other hand is knit with one skein of Tosh Lace and one skein of Sweet Georgia Lace and can put most horse blankets to shame. (You can always stop knitting at an earlier point in the pattern, if horse blanket isn’t your style.) The other best part about...

Hello Friday

02 Aug 2013

FOs, Hello Friday

It’s Friday again. And again, I don’t know how that happened or where Thursday went. Oh well. So, this past week there was: a post about crescents the Conclusion of the Shawl Geometry blog series got Shawl Geometry II edits back. lots of spinning work-ey things lots of brainstorming, and therefore a wall of post-it-note ideas the end of the month (goodbye July, hello August) updated and cleaned up the pattern page. (go browse, get patterns) Next week there will be: more work-ey things. a post color in shawls editing Shawl Geometry II more spinning I still need a new knitting project small updates to things. I’m playing with a (non sucky) Friday ritual. I’d love to hear any thoughts or ideas, your Friday ‘rituals’ if you have them. You’re totally welcome to look at your week, past or future, here (or on your own.) But either way, be...

Welcome! I'm Holly Chayes.