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

an even longer disembodied sleeve

Each Wednesday, I post a snapshot of the projects I’m working on, and where my brain is at. Traveling for Thanksgiving means that the disembodied sleeve I began last week as good travel knitting, is a far longer disembodied sleeve now. Since the beginning this sweater has been fantastic mindless knitting – lots of long expanses of straightforward stockinette, with some interesting construction details to look forward to, and the sleeves are no exception. I also finished up reading Folk Fashion by Amy Tigger Holroyd, it was a great read, and I finally found a use for these mustache post-it notes that I’ve never had a use for, but couldn’t bring myself to get rid of. The book made some interesting points about folk fashion in relation to the large scope of fashion, identity, and culture. If you’re at all interested in that, I’d suggest taking a look at this...
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a disembodied sleeve

Each Wednesday, I post a snapshot of the projects I’m working on, and where my brain is at. I’ve been steadily knitting away on the body of my Fairchild sweater, and have almost reached the hem. But at this point the project is fairly large and bulky, which doesn’t make it ideal Thanksgiving travel knitting. So I cast on for a sleeve, which is far more purse & travel friendly. The Shawl Geometry Book Three update continues slowly. No related posts.

bits & pieces, and a sweater body

Each Wednesday, I post a snapshot of the projects I’m working on, and where my brain is at. This week has been one of those weeks where I feel like I’ve done a ton of things, but the only thing I have to show for it is more progress on the body of a sweater. I feel like everything else this week has been tying up loose ends, or making tweaks, or waiting on something to come back with notes, or running errands, or other small bits and pieces like that. And it’s amazing how much time those things take! Regardless, I’m still managing to add a couple inches to my sweater each night, and so it’s coming along nicely. No related posts.