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

What is the very next step?

14 Mar 2016

thoughts & things, Tips & Tricks

I am at a place of stuck with my sweater. The body is knit and I am halfway through the first sleeve. I’m beginning to get an inkling that I will need a 3rd cone of yarn, but at the moment I still have a comfortable amount on the cone I’m working from. I haven’t worked on it in a couple days – though I know exactly where I am, and what happens next. I am halfway through the first sleeve. The thing to do would be to continue down the sleeve. That is the very next step. But every time I reach for my knitting I hesitate. Something is not – quite – right. I try my sweater on. Trying on clothing you’ve made is a moment of truth. You’re body knows. Your body knows the minute the fabric touches your skin, whether or not it works for you....

Back in NYC – it’s an adjustment and is not quite warm enough to knit outside

09 Mar 2016

what's in the works

Each Wednesday, I take stock of the projects I’m working on, and where my brain is at. I arrived back in NYC Thursday, and was promptly greeted by snow flurries and ridiculous subway delays – welcome back indeed. I’m slowly adjusting to being back. Everything is thoroughly familiar, and entirely different; like looking at a familiar landscape through a new lens. Which I guess it is. What is travel if not a way to shake up everything in our brains, and come back to our day-to-day lives with new eyes. Spring is beginning to come around here, when the sun is shining and the wind isn’t blowing it can be downright warm – not quite knitting in the park warm. I do miss that, and can’t wait till it’s that warm here (though it seems like the Bay Area has been cold & rainy lately, so it sounds like I...

A yarn (and fabric) tour of Portland, the younger.

08 Mar 2016

Travel

As I was saying yesterday, it turns out having to fly something across the country is a pretty good filter for your purchases. This it turned out to be excellent news, because PDX seems to have a yarn shop, fabric shop, or vintage store on every single block. The first place I visited in Portland was Twisted Yarns (well, after I did “brunch & letters” which seems like a thoroughly PDX thing) – they were thoroughly friendly staff, as well as customers, and an excellent yarn selection. I picked up a skein of Knitted Wit’s Single Fingering, and probably would have also brought home some of the spinning fiber. Again – if I hadn’t had to fly it across the country. Yarnia was an entirely unique yarn shop. They have tons of cones of thread in a whole variety of fibers, weights and colors, and then you choose which threads...

Welcome! I'm Holly Chayes.