The Metric System
Years ago the U.S. tried to implement the metric system. They blame the failure to implement on public resistance. It was more like corporate resistance to the cost of changing all of their labels, machinery, pricing, etc.
The Metric System Made Easy: You Already Know It If You Knit
Knit-friend Jamie (known by many for his knitting designs) messaged me saying his entire life has been absorbed by knitting. Someone told him he could have 50 grams of something and he instantly related by imagining how much a 50 gram ball of yarn weighed.
One of the difficulties using the metric system in the U.S. is that it feels abstract. Kilometers and grams and centimeters don’t really feel like anything.
As a knitter, I’ve begun to start thinking more and more in metric.
Take your yarn. That skein you’re working with right now? Chances are it’s labeled 50 grams or 100 grams. Many times you’ve felt what it feels like to have a 50-gram ball in your hand. You know how light it is, how much yardage (mabye even meterage) it typically holds, roughly how far it’ll take you on a project. That’s 50 grams. That’s a real tactile unit of weight.
Having used a needle gauge for decades now, I can visualize 5 millimeters relatively easily now. So when I tell my urologist that I passed a 3.5mm kidney stone, I am visualizing a US 4 knitting needle diameter. I don’t know about you, but I can pretty closely tell what size a knitting needle is just by looking at it. Just like I can now tell about how big a kidney stone is.
Time To Standardize Already!
The United States made a serious push toward metric back in the 1970s. The Metric Conversion Act passed in 1975, schools embraced it enthusiastically, and for a brief moment it looked like America might actually make the switch. Then it didn’t. Corporate petulance won out, and by the early 1980s the effort had quietly faded. All we’re left with are 2-liter bottles of soda and 5K races.
Fortunately knitting is international enough that metric has started to infiltrate the States. Pattern books from the UK, yarn imported from Italy, needles sized in millimeters. Knitters and crocheters absorbed metric naturally, through practice, without any government mandate.
Don’t get me wrong, centigrade temperatures still require me to look up the Fahrenheit equivalent. I also still have to convert 7″ (about 18 cm?) to centimeters by figuring out 10 cm is equal to about 4″ since that is the standard stitch gauge measurement.
Despite all that, I wish we’d get rid of anything in knitting that wasn’t metric. Surely knitters can agree on a common measurement, no?
Current Knitting
Since Wednesday, I was able to finish the Noro simple hat I had started.
I also started another Melt the ICE hat was I was at it.
I’ve only gotten about 4 or 5 centimeters finished on the ribbing so far. See what I did there?
Really enjoyed your fun article on the metric system. While I use inches for most things, centimeters often seem easier to deal with, especially when counting stitches in swatches and measuring blocked pieces.
I go to an international zoom and once, when talking about my gauge swatches, an Italian man living in the UK said it warmed his heart to hear me describe them in centimeters.
Didn’t you just cast on that hat? You are on fire. It looks great.
Best wishes for more March.
Lately I have been forcing myself to rely on the metric measurement included in patterns, just to make foreign designs easier to knit. I’m loving all of your hats lately.
By the way, I always thought kidney stones felt way bigger than they really were!