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

Looking back at knitting Gene Tierney

26 Apr 2013

FOs

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. I don’t have any new FOs this Friday, so I thought I’d take a look back at one of my older pieces. Gene Tierney, the divine I’ve recently fallen back in love with this shawl and have been wearing it everywhere the past couple days. It’s large and cushy without being heavy or dense. It’s super easy to wear, and looks great with just about anything. I originally designed this shawl for the Sanguine Gryphon’s Fall 2011 “Film Noir” pattern line. The original sample was knit with two skeins of Mithril (which the Verdant Gryphon now carries) in the “Der Blaue Engel” colorway. I’ve since re-released the pattern, which you can get here. The craziest thing...

Knit, knit, knit

24 Apr 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 hit a point in every shawl where it just gets super boring to blog or talk about. The exact point changes from shawl to shawl, but it’s generally somewhere just past the middle. Getting to the middle is relatively fast and easy and exciting because of NEW PATTERN! feelings. And it’s not quite the point where I’ve hit the final slog of the last repeat or two, where I just want the shawl done. It’s somewhere between the two where I’m just kind of “eh, ok” about the project. I still love the yarn, and still love the pattern, but it’s the point where I know the design will now work out, the...

Shawl Geometry: Square Knit in the Round

22 Apr 2013

Shawl Geometry

This is the first post in a series about different shawl shapes and how to knit them. All the posts in the series can be found right here. The easiest way to think about shawl shapes is to understand the basic geometric shapes: square, triangle, and circle, and then manipulate and decorate them to get all these other shawl shapes and styles. But there are also multiple ways to create each basic shape: backwards, forwards, and sideways. The Square Knit in the Round, is knit in the round. This shawl is shaped with four pairs (eight total) of evenly spaced increases (or decreases), worked every other round. The pairs of increases (or decreases) radiate outwards (or inwards) from the center of your shawl to the hem pushing (or pulling) the fabric to form the four corners of your square. The Square Knit in the Round from the center out The...

Welcome! I'm Holly Chayes.