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

First Third of a Shawl

17 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. Five and half repeats out of fourteen or fifteen total repeats on my stole knit in The Verdant Gryphon’s Mithril, colorway “Interior.” Still love the yarn, the color, the pattern, the entire project. I’m sorry this is an awful photo. You can see the color and pattern much better in this post. If you’d like more WIP Wednesday posts from other bloggers, visit Tami’s blog. Related posts Things & Ideas oodles of green Shawl Geometry Anwar No related posts.

Shawl Geometry Introduction

15 Apr 2013

Shawl Geometry

Ages and ages ago I mentioned working on a couple swatches to illustrate shawl shapes, primarily for my own reference, but thought that it might be interesting to write up a blog post about how to shape different types of shawls. Well, a couple swatches became many more than a couple, and a single blog post quickly became far too long, and the whole idea grew in leaps and bounds until it became a series, and that series grew so long that it made sense to have an accompanying series of ebooks. So here we have it, a series of blog posts about the ins and outs of shaping knitted shawls, and here’s the game plan. This series of posts covers the basic shawl shapes (circles, squares, triangles) and beyond (shallow triangles, 3/4 squares, crescents, etc). The shawl shapes we’ll cover are: Squares: center out, hem in, edge to edge,...

Mayur

12 Apr 2013

Pattern Releases

Mayur is now available for purchase as a download, for $6.00 either on Ravelry, or directly through the blog …buy now Mayur, meaning “peacock” in Sanskrit, was inspired by my desire to create a two color shawl with an ombre stripping sequence. Sometimes simplicity is best and so to let the yarn shine, the only stitch patterns used are stockinette and a yo, k2tog mesh. This makes it the perfect pattern for that special hand-painted yarn. Yarn: 980 yards (896 meters), fingering weight Shown in: Unplanned Peacock Studio, “Superwash Merino Fingering Weight”; 875 yards (800 meters)/skein, 1 skein each of “slate” & “robin’s egg” Needles: US size 6 (4.00 mm) 40 inch (100 cm) circular or size needed to obtain gauge Notions: 1 stitch markers, tapestry needle Gauge: 20 sts/4 inches; 30 rows/4 inches (20 sts/10 cm; 30 rows/10 cm) in washed and blocked stockinette Blocked Dimensions: 21.5 inches (54.5...

Welcome! I'm Holly Chayes.