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

Speedy Knitting

20 Jan 2012

Adminnie Stuffs, General Stuffs

I always forget how fast knitting goes when you knit with needles larger then a 3.00mm. This is about an evenings worth of work yesterday. Other than this, knitting has been extremely light the past couple of days in an attempt to give my wrists, and arms a chance to relax after that sweater sprint during the first part of the week. Anyway, the semester starts back up on Monday, so I’m not sure how knitting and blogging will fit in around classes and work. I expect they’ll both slow down again, but we shall see. No related posts.

Startitis Strikes Again

17 Jan 2012

General Stuffs

I thought it was done. I truly thought that casting on four shawls (plus one secret deadline project) in 14 days would be enough to satisfy the beast that is startitis. But it would seem not. Saturday morning over coffee I started doing the math for a sweater. Why? For sh*ts and giggles apparently. (I still don’t know why I thought this was a good idea.) Then I charted it all out. (Just to see how the shaping would work in pattern of course.) And then I cast on. (Because the cast on number seemed a little high and I wanted to see it in real life.) At this point I was doomed. I cast on, started knitting, and soon Saturday, Sunday and Monday were all gone in a puff of smoke, while I was left standing there with 5 inches of sweater. If all of this seems a bit...

Yearly Bout of Startitis

14 Jan 2012

General Stuffs

It’s a very serious condition that can’t seem to be avoided, staved off, prevented. It leaves everything a complete mess, the stash, the desk, the bookshelf. It’s ruthless, and before you know it you have four simultaneous shawls in the works, (or maybe that’s just me). The Tosh Prairie, and beads got cast on, into crescent shaped shawl. Every yarn over has a bead in it (what was I thinking). Even though you can’t see them right now, they are there, and hopefully everything will open up in the blocking, they’ll become visible and I won’t have to rip all my hair out. Fingers crossed. This is the ponycorns handspun from the last post, in the same pattern as the Prairie (no beads this time), because I wanted to see if the pattern would hold its own in an extremely busy yarn. I think it’s working out, but I want...

Welcome! I'm Holly Chayes.