In 2010 Kate Davies was an academic and a knitter with a reasonably well-known blog and one wildly successful published design (the Owls sweater) when, at the age of 36, she suffered a stroke which left her left side paralysed. Her memoir, Handywoman, begins with a look at the handmade influences on her childhood in 1970s and 1980s Rochdale, and then skips forward to discuss the process of recovering from her stroke, gradually teaching the left side of her body to move again and building a new life as a disabled woman who is now the owner of a very successful knitting business. Along the way she discusses gendered assumptions in medicine (as a woman with a history of mental health problems, her paralysis was initially misdiagnosed as psychosomatic rather than being caused by a stroke), walking (her love of walking led her to create a collection of knitting patterns themed around the West Highland Way, which was one of the main inspirations for my walk this summer), accessible design, and, of course, knitting, which played many roles in her recovery: a source of comfort; a skill which helped with the rebuilding of neural pathways; the foundation of a community which rallied round to provide support and send woolly hugs from halfway around the world; and ultimately, a way of making a living in a way that could be fitted around the essential self-care needed to manage the ongoing effects of her stroke.

I really enjoyed reading this. Davies's writing is precise and lyrical, and Handywoman is interesting and thought-provoking. Her reflections on accessibility have made me consider my own implicit ableism, and where I might be able to do things differently, while the sections on knitting made my fingers itch to be holding yarn and needles, and also made me think about how I use knitting to balance my own slightly wonky brain. It's probably not a surprise that as soon as I finished the book I cast on for one of Davies's Fair Isle hat patterns...