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

yarn tangles & crocheting in the rain… with dogs

12 Aug 2015

what's in the works

Each Wednesday, I take stock of the projects I’m working on. What I’m Working On… I started untangling the nightmare of all nightmare yarn tangles. It’s five balls of yarn that got tumbled together in the dryer, and I’ve been putting it off for about a year. I’m not positive I made progress. And I’m pretty sure this is going to take forever. So I chose to get distracted by Maine. Between watching sunrises and seaweed with a couple dogs (plus family members of the more human variety), I added a couple rounds to my crochet granny square cardigan. I’m close to finishing one of the four balls of yarn, and the rounds aren’t getting any shorter. No related posts.

To Read Over Coffee #7 – all about the color

08 Aug 2015

To Read Over Coffee

A collection of links from the past few weeks that I think are interesting/amusing/educational/insightful enough to read/watch/listen & think about over a cup of coffee. I’ve been doing more book reading than online reading, but either way I have color on the brain. Teeny tiny itty bitty knitting!! A beautiful dark blue dress + green shoes on the Satorialist. From Mental Floss 19 Colors You’ve Probably Never Heard Of and 11 Colors You’ve Probably Never Heard Of (fascinating titles, I know…) But both have some great colors on them, and interestingly “Falu” (a deep red that was named for Falun, Sweden) is repeated on both lists, and the articles were published almost exactly a year apart. And if you’re looking for something more thoughtful, both these articles from BrainPickings are simply excellent: Goethe on the Psychology of Color and Emotion plus The Magic and Logic of Color: How Josef Albers...

Thoughts from day 366 of a 365 day project.

07 Aug 2015

The Self-Made Wardrobe

The Self-Made Wardrobe is a project where I only wear garments I’ve made. It’s a year long experiment in getting dressed without clothing labels – it’s a year about noticing patterns, trying things, and observing what happens. A string of semi-connected, sort of jumbled thoughts from day 366 of a 365 day long self-made wardrobe project. 1. Intentionally breaking a 365 day long habit feels strange as hell. 2. I spent my entire shower trying to figure out what the hell to wear, and then I was running late – so I ended up throwing on my black maxi skirt, and a tank top. 3. Unpacking my wardrobe has turned into something of an inowanna-iguana. 4. Apart from a few specific pieces that I miss like hell, I can only vaguely remember what clothes I had – though it seems there were piles of them. 5. I didn’t quite realize...

Welcome! I'm Holly Chayes.