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

Arrowhead Stole

30 Jul 2010

Pattern Releases

The Arrowhead Stole is now available for purchase as a download, for $6.00 either on Ravelry, or directly through the blog by clicking the buy now button. Knit on larger needles, with the yarn held double and an easy to memorize stitch pattern, this stole works up very quickly. The entire main body of the stole is knit in one piece, then the border stitches are picked up and an inside border is knit, with an outer border knit on. With the outer border echoing both the diamonds and the arrows in the main body, this piece has a geometric continuity. On the larger end of stole sizing, this piece can either be worn wrapped around the shoulders for a more elegant look, or it can be worn as a large cozy scarf with something more casual. Another alternative is simply to curl up in it with a good book...

Climbing Trellis

27 Jul 2010

Pattern Releases

Climbing Trellis is now available for purchase as a download, for $3.00 either on Ravelry, or directly through the blog by clicking the buy now button. Climbing Trellis is a fast and simple knit. The shape is created using the slant that comes from offsetting vertical lines of decreases and yarn-overs. This technique creates a scarf that has a zig-zaged rather than a straight edge, and a fabric where diagonal solid lines are placed next to diagonal lines of yarn-overs. This movement as well as the play that the negative and positive spaces have, brings to mind the image of vines climbing a trellis. The solidness of both the vine and the trellis juxtaposed with the spaces between the trellis supports and the vines. This is a fairly intuitive and easy to memorize pattern, consisting almost entirely of left leaning and right leaning decreases, yarn-overs, and purl stitches. All patterning...

A Crazy Number of WIPs

25 Jul 2010

Uncategorized

It’s been awhile since I’ve updated, but despite that there has been lots of knitting going on. The sky is overcast this afternoon, so some of the pictures might not be the best, but either way, here we go. Beginning with two finished objects. Both Leaves and Snakeskin, as well as the second Birdy Shawl are off the needles. Leaves and Snakeskin is knit out of STR lightweight in Gail’s Autumn Joy, and the second Birdy Shaw is knit out of STR mediumweight in Dragon Dance. Both of these projects simply fell off the needles over the past month. Looking back I got the yarn about a month and a half ago, and both of these were finished a week or so ago. I still need to write up and format these patterns, but both these patterns are towards the top of, a rather long list, of patterns to get...

Welcome! I'm Holly Chayes.