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?

A personal style coaching and content practice devoted to helping you own and wear your clothes intentionally, instead of being worn by them. Discover your own style guidance, and learn more about the practice of intentional style at WhoWearsWho.com

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

it’s been a week of, scribbling, typing, swatching, and fabric cutting

Each Wednesday, I take stock of the projects I’m working on, and where my brain is at. One final shawl shape swatch to add to book 1 of the Shawl Geometry Update. Yesterday, I wrote in my monthly newsletter, that “Last time I wrote to you, I was getting ready to scribble all over these books in purple pen. And scribble away I have. Scribbles have been scribbled, scribbles have been typed, technical editors have been contacted, and more rounds of scribbles lay ahead. As always, I’ll be sure to keep you updated.” (If you want to sign up to easily stay in the loop, you can here.) I’ve spent much of my time this week typing up those scribbled edits and fixing scribbled on graphics for the Shawl Geometry Books Update. I expect to be scribbling away again this coming week. But in between scribbling, and typing scribbles, I...
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frogging, editing, and my summer wardrobe infusion

Each Wednesday, I take stock of the projects I’m working on, and where my brain is at. Two notable things have happened this week on the crafting front of my life. Firstly, I frogged about 2 inches of my Lady Bat sweater. I ripped back my Lady Bat sweater to before I joined the front with the back to knit the second sleeve. I started knitting the second sleeve two weeks ago, but tried it on this week only to discover that I didn’t make the front & back wide enough. Ah well. Because of the sideways construction, trying it on (and getting an accurate sense of what of how much more you have to knit), really requires an extra hand or two. So, I’m going to knit a couple more inches on the front & back of my sweater, before joining again for the second sleeve. And while frogging...
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How do we decide when it’s time to throw a piece of clothing out?

Buying, mending, and disposable fashion. Writing about mending my favorite pair of jeans last week got me thinking about how we decide when it’s time to throw a piece of clothing out. How do we decide it’s time to throw a piece of clothing out? Or rather, when do we decided it’s time to donate a piece of clothing, so someone else can throw it out? When a piece of clothing can easily and cheaply be replaced, it’s almost never a case of necessity that prompts us to dispose of a piece of clothing. And more than that, when the common avenue for disposing of our clothing is by donation, then we’re asked to donate them in “good working condition” – way sooner than the end of a piece of clothing’s life cycle. It used to be (not that long ago) that clothing was designed, patterned, and manufactured with the...
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