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

Big pile of swatches, take 2.

21 Jun 2013

what's in the works

I’m always working on some project or another, which means I often have FOs and new designs to share. You can see all my FOs … here … and all my designs … here. The swatches for Shawl Geometry II are done, blocked and photographed. Whoo! I focused Shawl Geometry on common shawls shapes, the shapes we’ve all seen before, and are somewhat familiar with. Shawl Geometry II focuses on less common shapes, some bias rectangles and triangles, a whole series of wedge crescents (my favorite shape), plus a bunch of other squares, rectangles, triangles, and circle variations. You can learn more about Shawl Geometry here, and here. If you’d like more FO Friday posts, from other bloggers, visit Tami’s blog. No related posts.

Three yays for fabulous, easy knitting.

19 Jun 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 started a new shawl, and it’s not even my pattern. Which means I don’t really need to think about what I’m doing, or right down any pattern instructions. Because the pattern’s easy, and already written, and written beautifully, so all I need to do is follow the stinking thing, and not mess it up. Which has been going marvelously (except for that bit where I forgot to keep track of what I was doing, and royally screwed it up, and then had to rip and reknit this morning, oops) apart from that it’s been fabulous. yay! And on US 7 needles and worsted weight yarn, it’s a super speedy knit. yay! The...

Shawl Geometry: Bias Square

18 Jun 2013

Shawl Geometry

This is the tenth post in a series about different shawl shapes and how to knit them. All the posts in the series can be found right here. Bias Square The Bias Square is knit at on a diagonal, starting in one corner and working to its opposite corner. This is accomplished by working a single increase at either edge, every other row through the first half of your shawl, and then working a single decrease at either edge every other row through the second half. Woven fabric cut on the bias is cut at a 45 degree angle to the warp and weft threads. Since we don’t generally cut our hand knitted fabric, to get fabric on the bias in hand knitting you start working at one corner and work your way to the opposite corner. This shawl must be blocked once it’s done or it won’t be square....

Welcome! I'm Holly Chayes.