Metric - I feel such a fool!

Well, you are not far off, MamaCaz! It's 30.48cm, so not much in it. .

The one that I do remember exactly is one gallon= 4.456 litres.
I worked in NHS finance and the boiler house would order the hospital fuel in gallons and the oil company would deliver in litres and that was forty years ago.
It caused no end of problems.

It is probably because the standard ruler measured 12 inches, and was replaced with one measuring 30 centimetres, almost the same size. Some rulers had inch/centimetre measurements on different sides.

I always use the 30cm = 12".
near enough.

I just remember the rhymes from long ago!

‘ Two and a quarter pounds of jam, weighs about a kilogram’

and

‘ A litre of water’s a pint and three quarters’.

I just devide by 10 and multiply by 4 , I don’t / can’t do metric

It's approximate and a useful conversion (I use 10cms = 4") if you're thinking of depth of snow, rainfall etc, but if you need something more precise best to measure carefully .

I've always just remembered 10cm = about 4 inches. I still don't know how much a pound of mince is.

450g (give or take a bit!)

It’s relative weight that gets me. I know what 11stone or 12 is ?????but when’s it’s in kilos I have no idea if that is good, bad or appalling!

Well, you're not very far out MamaCaz!

Re weight...I've got lots of old recipes in lbs and oz and when I'm shopping find that 4ozs (or quarter of a pound) = roughly 100 grams very useful.

I don't do metric.

Metric weights bring out my awkward side - I can't use them here in England, but have no problem at all with them when in France or Spain (well, except the time when there was a misunderstanding between me and a Spanish shop assistant that resulted in her filling several carrier bags with mushrooms, 4 kilos of them to be exact, when I only wanted a quarter of a kilo! )
Could have been worse though. I know someone who had a similar misunderstanding in French, except she was buying minced beef, and the penny didn't drop until the butcher had nearly finished feeding a huge amount of steak through the mincer.

Mama

At least you were not too embarrassed to make a post of it !! Good for you.

Fortunately, I don't have that problem, I know the distance from my home to the supermarket is 11 kilos.

I have a weird disconnect between metric and imperial measurements. I would only know how heavy or light a baby was if it was given to me in pounds and ounces - yet for the temperature I always use centigrade to the extent that Fahrenheit doesn’t register with me any more!

Have to admit, I much prefer working in imperial, sewing, knitting, cooking etc all done in the old weights and measures. But, I was watching a YouTube video recently on the subject of sewing with jersey fabric; the presenter/seamstress said " turn the waistband casing 1cm and then 1 inch" ! Talk about confusing!!!!!

I still try to ignore kilograms and litres. I think I am with you Urmstongram.

BradfordLass72

My only measurement guide - a metre measures 3ft 3, it's longer than a yard you see! Kilometres to miles is guesswork

After years of teaching metric I found myself looking for the words to “The Ten Days of Christmas “! ? and it took a while for the new penny to drop.
Nowadays I am a mongrel when it comes to measuring. I do measure my knitting in centimetres and the temperature in degrees C but I still prefer pints, stones and pounds.

I started my nurse training in 1964 and we used litres and Kg etc as measurements. Very go ahead hospital. Babies were weighed in kg but immediately parents would say “What is that in real ‘money’.” I retired in 2007 and they were still asking the same question. Mainly because they wanted to compare the babies birth weight with their own and past generations and when they got home after clinic others would ask. These are parents who would not have learnt lbs and oz at school and would have no idea how to do sums in lbs and oz. We put a conversion chart on the wall as we got fed up with doing the conversion for them

I have no problem with metric but I will put in £20 of petrol or fill it up my car as I don’t know how many litres are needed. Cooking I use 30 grams to the oz but it is about 28 grams. I will ask for ham, bacon or meat etc in grams but then might ask for a bit more but I think we always did that. I measure in metric.

When I think of the complicated sums we did with £.S.P, lbs and oz and feet and inches no wonder we know how to do mental arithmetic.

P.s. I understand temperature better in C. Than F.

30cm = 11.811 inches which to me is as near as dammit. If you did O levels as I did then cms didn't enter into it. If you are worried then I think the secret is when using a pattern for example to follow its instructions and check the measurements with a tape measure to be the same as in the pattern. The same with recipes you either work all in metric or imperial following what the recipe says and do not try to combine the two systems as they are not exactly the same.

I don't like metric, and have never understood it. If I need to, I ask Mr Google to convert for me.