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 sweater that took 3 years to knit. And some thoughts on making teeny tiny steps forward.

02 Oct 2014

Projects

I’m working on my transitional weather sweater (hopefully). This sweater took 3 years to knit, and it has prompted some thoughts on making teen-tiny-itty-bitty steps forward. I knit a lot. I have a handful of unfinished sweaters hanging about, and thanks to a swift kick in the butt from the self-made wardrobe project I’m finishing a bunch of them up. This particular sweater has taken me 3 years and 1 month to finish. As far as sweaters go, this one is pretty straightforward. But the interesting thing about it, is how much my knitting has changed since I started it. My actual gauge hasn’t changed (thankfully), the actual number of stitches per inch is the same as it was three years ago. But my knitting has changed. My stitches are straighter. My tension is more even. You can definitely feel the difference. And up close you can see the difference....

two sweaters and a shawl

01 Oct 2014

what's in the works

Each Wednesday I post little snippets about the projects I’m working on. You can see all of the Wednesday posts here. I’m working on the last two rows of my lace shawl!!! Working with Julie Asselin’s “merletto” was absolutely amazing as always, I can’t wait to work with it again. My boring black sweater is moving along with some help from “Downton Abbey.” I know that I’m going to love wearing it, I just hope knitting the sleeves isn’t too awful. My Versio sweater is blocking! Yay! I can’t wait to clip all the ends, thread the cording, and start wearing it! No related posts.

The Self-Made Wardrobe Projet Month 1

29 Sep 2014

The Self-Made Wardrobe

Since it’s almost the end of the second month of the self-made wardrobe project, I figured I should probably get around to posting the first month’s wrap up. August was the month of figuring out systems and routines for this project. Creating a wardrobe building “plan.” Figuring out how to seamlessly take a photo every day, and then turn those photos into a post every week. A new laundry routine. A different kind of sewing & knitting practice. Finding routines, making plans, figuring out systems, and streamlining thing – that’s what August was about. How often did I wear what? Black tank tops: 28 days Floral Maxi Skirt: 11 days Handkerchief Hem Circle Skirt: 8 days Red & White Striped Pirate Skirt: 4 days Black Maxi Skirt with Slit: 3 days Jersey Wrap Dress: 2 days Blue Kimono: 2 days Black Racer Back Mini Dress: 1 day Alice in...

Welcome! I'm Holly Chayes.