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

Finding Colors that Sing

01 Dec 2014

thoughts & things, Tips & Tricks

Finding colors that sing. Many color combinations work well together. They’re beautiful, and full, and play off of each other. Coexisting to make the world a more beautiful place. Some color combinations sing. They hum, and vibrate, and resonate. They wibble, and warble, and trill. They make your eyes light up and dance. These are the combinations that are kinda-weird, but totally amazing. Unexpected. In the best possible way. The combinations that transcend “that works.” The combinations that wander into “that’s amazing” territory. And set up camp. What if, we take two steps past “it works?” Two steps towards finding colors that sing. No related posts.

The Self-Made Wardrobe Week 17

28 Nov 2014

The Self-Made Wardrobe

The Self-Made Wardrobe is a project where I only wear garments I’ve made. It’s sort of a year long experiment in getting dressed without clothing labels. DAY 113 – NOVEMBER 21th Moonstruck Cardigan Woven Scarf Black Maxi Skirt with a Slit Grey Tights Brown Boots Various Rings It was one of those crazy bright, freezing cold sort of days. Note to self: your really really need to get the rest of your winter boots resoled. Like yesterday… DAY 114 – NOVEMBER 22nd Deconstructed Black Sweater Basic Black Tank Top Cascading Flowers Skirt Brown Boots when u was making this sweater I didn’t think I would absolutely love it quite as much as I do. But then again what’s not to love about a huge cozy black sweater? And the fact that it works with absolutely every skirt I own, just makes it that much better. DAY 115 – NOVEMBER 23rd...

it’s been a week of crafting mishaps

26 Nov 2014

what's in the works

Each Wednesday, I post little snippets about what’s happening, and what I’m working on. My crazy colorful sweater is coming along. It’s pretty slow going, and there was a bit of a hiccup when I realized I had vastly underestimated the yardage I needed (by about half) because I miscounted the number of rows I had to the inch. Luckily, I found more yarn, and I’m transitioning my colors now, so all should be ok. Fingers crossed. And then I tried on my purple sweater and decided I hated how the neckline was sitting, so I cut it off, wound the yarn back up, and am going to re-knit it. But at least I’m working off of the correct row count for this sweater. So as sort of a consolation prize for the sweater mishaps, I cut the fabric for my first Archer button up shirt, and started sewing it...

Welcome! I'm Holly Chayes.