Gerda Jorgenson: Portrait of a Knitting Olympian
January 4th, 2011At 8 AM on December 31, the air outside is crisp and cold, as Gerda sits down with her knitting needles and begins to cast on. With her air of determination and calm demeanor, no one would guess the struggles that Gerda has overcome to bring her to this day of the Holden Olympiad; no one could possibly imagine the sheer fortitude that has brought her to this moment. She will be knitting for 9 solid hours against some of the strongest competition Holden has ever seen.
Gerda was born in Colby, Kansas (no connection with cheese). She grew up in a nice, supportive family, but none of them were knitters. “My parents are my greatest support,” says Jorgenson, “although they did not teach me to knit at an early age, and that’s a bummer… But I won’t let that hold me back,” she adds quickly, looking down at the blur of moving needles and casting on approximately 100 stitches within the first minute.
Although impressive, her fast cast-on may reveal one of Gerda’s greatest weaknesses. Jorgenson suffers from a painful pinkie finger, a handicap that she has desperately tried to overcome in the past year. Over the course of the day, her pace will slow considerably. This is when Jorgenson’s arch-nemesis, the uber-athletic and indefatigable Sam Lyon, may prove to be her greatest challenge. But this is also when Gerda can pull out her secret weapon: at the core, Jorgenson is an artist. No matter how many rows the ultra-competitive Sam can produce, Gerda is attuned to the nature of her raw material. That, along with a sense of color and pattern, can keep Gerda at the head of the knitting pack.
“See, Sam is using black yarn,“ sniffs Jorgenson, “That’s so unimaginative.” She lifts up her own rust-colored knitting, with the cable-knit just emerging from the needles, “I’m working on a cable-knit scarf.”
Jorgenson has another advantage that she keeps close to home —- the lucky knitting needle. Back when she was just learning to knit at Holden, the much celebrated and revered Lori Franson gave her a small knitting needle. Gerda will often wear this talisman behind her ear or in her hair or tucked in her favorite clothes from potty patrol. Once, while in the bathroom, Gerda had a knitting-needle epiphany. As she approached the toilet (which was clean—Gerda, after all, moonlights as Head Housekeeper at Holden), the favorite knitting needle fell into the water. Horrified, Jorgenson quickly plucked the needle from the depths and in that moment, realized how important knitting was to her. “It was a very Lutheran moment,” she confessed, “Until that incident, I hadn’t felt truly alive.”
No one can say that Jorgenson is not alive, not during this competition. She exhibits the focus and competitiveness of one of the few great Olympian knitters. Says a friend who wishes to remain anonymous, “At lunch, I was trying to visit with her, and she dropped a stitch—it was awful, the tension in the air. I realized at that point that I just needed to leave the table.” In the end, Gerda Jorgenson did have to rip out a few rows. “It was totally worth it,” she recalls, “the yarn was speaking to me, and I couldn’t ignore it.”
This attention to detail pays off in the end — though left unfinished, Jorgenson’s scarf earns her the award for best artistry and makes Jorgenson’s name one that will echo in the annals of Holden knitting forever.