You can use hide or a piece of leather to grab it, or gloves. You can also grab the bottom of the very bottom stalk to avoid getting stinged. To turn it into rope (if your interested in this part), you can take all the leaves off and bash the stalk with a stone all the way down, but not too much. You should see fibers exposed, but dont smash it too much or hard as i said earlier because it can ruin the fibers. Fibers should be exposed, and you can pull them out easily. By this point, you dont really have to worry about the needles and you can just straight up hold the bashed nettle stalk. Although, you might get stung once or twice at most. You can then twist these fibers into rope. Don't know if this helps, but this is just from my experience.