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

a sewn skirt, finished sweater, hand-drawn graphics, and a Lady Bat

25 May 2016

what's in the works

Each Wednesday, I take stock of the projects I’m working on, and where my brain is at. In the world of my summer wardrobe infusions – I got the skirt of my no longer going to be an Anna Dress sewn together over the weekend. Still not 100% sure what I want to do for the bodice, but I am loving the skirt so that must be a good sign. And I finished my well traveled sweater! Finished & posted, because is a finished garment really finished if you don’t have photos of it? I finished the sweater, took photos of it, and then yesterday, I promptly ripped out the decrease bind off at the neckline to replace it with an i-cord bind off. When I was originally knitting this sweater, I knew it was quite possible I wouldn’t have enough yarn, so when I was altering the neckline the...

A well traveled sweater – measuring time and space in knitting

24 May 2016

thoughts & things, Travel

Part of what I’ve always loved about making clothing is how the finished object can retain the memories of the places we were, or the things that were happening, or the people we were with, while we were making them. The sweater I just finished, is a rather well traveled one. Though the sweater technically started in San Francisco, it really started with a decision I made in NYC – to not pack any travel knitting projects. There have been times in my life when leaving the house without knitting was unheard of – let along getting ready to fly across the country without a project for the plane. Now though, I only leave the house knitting in hand, if I’m going somewhere with the express intention of knitting. And at the time I was packing for this trip I was also a thoroughly burned out knitter. (I ended up...

Finished Project: SFO-PDX-NYC Travel Sweater

22 May 2016

Flourishing Wardrobes, FOs

Just a heads up before we begin – I’ve broken this sweater’s story into two posts. This is the “proper finished object post” with all the technical bits & pieces (material, needles, pattern, intended alterations, etc.) And I’ll post the travel story portion in a day or two. Because trying to combine the two stories was giving me a headache and also an incredibly long read. It’s been quite awhile since I’ve had a finished object to write about. It seems that the last piece I wrote about was my Second Archer Button Up Shirt. Though the last thing I actually finished was my black and white crochet cardigan – that got swept up in a packing frenzy the moment I finished the seaming – so unfortunately no photos & no post until I get a chance to unpack it from my storage unit. Now that I’m thinking about it,...

Welcome! I'm Holly Chayes.