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

spin, spin, spin, wheeeeeeeeee!

31 Jul 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. I finished up the shawl a couple days ago. Still needs the ends woven in, and blocking, but the knitting is done. And it still kinda looks like a sea anemone. But instead of starting another knitting project I picked up an old spinning project. It’s a loop batt bullseye bump, with merino, corriedale, and angelina in it. It moves from the navy blue on the bottom right, to the lavender, to the marron-ish, then to a blue-grey (you can see a bit peeking out of the center of the ball of fiber.) Though the giant ball of fiber isn’t super portable, so I’ll probably start a new shawl soon. If you’d...

Shawl Geometry: Conclusion

30 Jul 2013

Shawl Geometry

Three and a half moths of shawl shapes. 16 posts. That’s a lot of shapes. But the craziest thing is that it’s just the beginning. Seriously. I’m in the middle of editing a second ebook with 18 more shapes for shawls. Because you can always explore deeper and play more. So do it. Take these shapes and play! Experiment! Design stuff! The beginning of the series is here, with links to all the posts. And if you really loved the blog series. Buy the ebook. Get all the information in one place, and help ensure that I can create more “teachy” blog posts. Or sign up for the Announce! Announce! list. And be the first to hear about Shawl Geometry II when it becomes available. No related posts.

Shawl Geometry: Wedge Crescent

29 Jul 2013

Shawl Geometry

This is the seventeenth post in a series about different shawl shapes and how to knit them. All the posts in the series can be found right here. Eight Equal Wedge Crescent Shaped Shawl from the top down This crescent is created with eight equal wedges shaped with eight single increases (or decreases). Rather than evenly spacing your shaping all the way around your shawl, like you would for a Wedge Circle, (or a Wedge Doughnut), you work eight equal wedges – four wedges shaped in one direction, and four wedges shaped in the opposite direction. Knitting Instructions CO 13sts. {4 border sts + 8 sections + 1 spine} R1: k2, (pm, yo, k1) 4 times, pm, k1, (pm, k1, yo) 4 times, pm, k2. R2: purl across. R3: k2, (sm, yo, k to marker) 4 times, sm, k1, (sm, k to marker, yo) 4 times, sm, k2. R4: purl...

Welcome! I'm Holly Chayes.