card n In 'knitting' a net, a thin wooden oblong, four or more inches long and of varying width, used as a guide to the size of mesh required.
   1873 CARROLL 35 The twine [seal nets] are made of is about three times the size of salmon net twine; it will require sixty pounds weight of such description of twine to make a seal net. The net is made on an 8 1/2 inch card. 1888 STEARNS 287 The working instruments were a needle and a card... The card was a simple flat piece of wood, as wide as the meshes were to be long, and long enough to overlap the last mesh by about half an inch. T 43/8-.64 You had a card the size of the [mesh] that you were going to knit, and you just go over it with a clove hitch and bring it back over the card. Go over again and put on another one, and put on until you get one hundred [meshes]. Then you'd slip that off o' your card. 1980 Nfld Qtly Fall, p. 60 [In the kitchen] my two older brothers, my sister and myself were expected to do our daily share of knitting, using special handmade wooden needles and mesh measuring card.

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