Note: Buy this pattern and the original 52 Pickup pattern at the same time for a hefty discount with the code “blackjack”

From the pattern:

I consider this sort of a “Magnum Opus” in double-knitting. On the surface it’s just a scarf, but it is knit from 54 charts including 53 two-pattern playing cards -- one of every value and suit, and one Joker. Each card is charted four times -- face-up and face-down, right side up and upside down. You can choose to follow the schematic I laid out, or lay out the cards in any order you choose.

52 Pickup is a sort of American children’s prank, a game where one child throws an entire deck up in the air so the cards fall willy-nilly all over the room. The hapless victim of the prank must then pick up all the cards. This “game” is probably single-handedly responsible for the majority of incomplete card decks in American households with children. I gather a similar “game” is played in Germany, although they have only 32 cards in the typical deck there.

So what’s up with the new edition? In 2013, Sally Holt from Knit Companion asked me to present to that year’s kClub -- an online virtual presentation followed by a KAL. Each of the four presenters would have 3 months with the kClub all to themselves. The other three were Cheryl Potter, Cat Bordhi and Lucy Neatby. How could I refuse?

The catch was that each presenter was designing something exclusive to the kClub. Sally had taken a shine to the 52 Pickup in previous conversations, so she asked me to do an exclusive edition of the scarf. She requested “girlier colors”, which I admittedly found a little odd -- after all, women and men both play cards that are (generally) the same colors. But I decided to give it a go, using colors that echoed the original white, red and black.

I took this golden opportunity to make some changes I should have done in the very beginning. I changed the font of the letters and numbers, making them more rounded and closer to the normal font found on playing cards. I changed the back of the cards to something more intriguing, while attempting to keep as close to an even distribution of colors as possible. And finally, I worked a card in one of every weight of yarn I could locate in the right colors, as well as several different fibers, just to give people ideas beyond the scarf that is suggested.

The one thing I regret is that I did not have the 4+ months I would have needed to work up another entire scarf to show all of the cards in the new design, but I hope that you’ll do that for me. Please feel free to post any photos up to the Fallingblox Designs and/or Double-Knitting groups on Ravelry -- whether you do the whole scarf or something entirely different with these charts.