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

spinning yarn, and editing words

Each Wednesday, I post a snapshot of the projects I’m working on, and where my brain is at. It’s been one of those weeks where I had no interest in working on fixing a fair isle project. I didn’t have time to sit down and focus on it, plus my brain was just not going to click into a project that complicated. So I pulled out a couple ounces of merino spinning fiber, and my trusty spindle. I have about 50 grams each of the bright-aqua, and the royal blue. I split both colors in half, then spun half of one and half of the other into one single. And plan to do the same with the second half. Then I’ll ply them together into a heavy laceweight 2-ply yarn. For me spinning projects are always a nice light project that I never have to think too much about, or...
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getting a fair isle pattern to line up across a three needle bind off

Each Wednesday, I post a snapshot of the projects I’m working on, and where my brain is at. It turns out that transforming a sweater into a pillow might not be the most seamless of transformations. My original plan with this piece of fabric was to turn it into a steeked cardigan with a fair amount of shaping, so I’ve had to do a bit of fudging to get the pattern to line up (semi)seamlessly across the three-needle bind off. After a bit of ripping out and reknitting it looks pretty good, so I’m going to leave it, weave in a ton of ends, and find some stuffing.   (Shawl Geometry Book 3 edits continue, and I have nothing interesting to say about them.) No related posts.

turning a sweater into a pillow

Each Wednesday, I post a snapshot of the projects I’m working on, and where my brain is at. Last week I touched no knitting, instead focusing on edits for the Shawl Geometry books, and a new project. But this week, I also dove back into my bag of unfinished projects and pulled out what is probably the oldest unfinished project I have laying around. I started this sweater back in 2012 and never even finished the bodice. Since, I have no intention of finishing this as a sweater, and I’m absolutely not ripping the whole thing out. I figure I’ll close up both ends and turn it into a pillow. Fingers crossed that works. No related posts.