Sunday Read: With Her Own Hands by Nicole Nehrig
It began with a blue ball of yarn and a beginner’s kit - but for Nicole Nehrig, the act of knitting was more than a craft. It was a lifeline, a quiet reckoning, and eventually, the inspiration for her new book, With Her Own Hands: Women Weaving Their Stories.
Part memoir, part cultural history, and part feminist manifesto, Nehrig - now a clinical psychologist and lifelong knitter - delves into the profound role textile work has played in shaping women’s lives across centuries and continents. From embroidery and quilting to beadwork, weaving, and knitting, she shows how these so-called “domestic” tasks have long served as vital forms of self-expression, survival, protest, education, and community-building.
Portrait of Nicole Nehrig. Source: Nicole Nehrig
In seven deeply researched chapters, Nehrig draws from anthropology, literature, science, politics, art history, and personal experience to reveal how women have made meaning - and remade their identities - through fibre. This “women’s work,” she argues, was often born from necessity and constraint. It was compatible with the rhythms of domestic life and often used to instil obedience, patience, and silence. Yet paradoxically, it also became a source of agency, imagination, and resistance...
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Image Credits:
Lead: Cover Image minus title and author text from 'With Her Own Hands' by Nicole Nehrig. Featured on the book design by Anna Knighton.