I have no idea why the phrase hat-trick came to mean three of something. If I can be bothered I’ll look it up – or perhaps you, dear reader, could tell me if you know. Be that as it may I am now approaching a hat hat-trick situation. I downloaded a pattern to make a hat for Maisie, aged 14 months. I thought the toddler size would work OK because even if it’s too big now, she’ll soon grow into it, so I bought the wool and off I went. Hats don’t take very long to knit but unfortunately even though like a good girl I’d done a tension square * this one came out so small that it was only just big enough for a newborn. OK, let’s try again, I thought – and this time I picked larger needles. After a few rows I could see the width was OK but it came out far too short. So I got Holly to measure Maisie’s head from top to eyebrow and yep, it was far too short. This is a really crappy pattern, I fumed, and prepared to do a third hat. But as I checked the pattern once again I realised I’d been following the dimensions for inches instead of centimetres. Argh!
* sounds like one of those bubble-wrap things to reduce tension but is in fact a trial square knitted to check the tension of one’s stitches
I wish we’d make our minds up about this. As Beetleypete has pointed out, we’re neither one thing nor the other in this country. We have metres and centimetres but the roads are all in miles; we weigh ourselves in stones but food is sold by the kilo and we buy milk in litres but beer in pints. I guess with Brexit we might expect things to go back to the insane but poetic old systems, but I bet they won’t.
I can’t bear to think about Brexit right now. It’s such a nightmare and it’s getting closer every day…
Help!
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 
“Hat-trick… The term first appeared in 1858 in cricket, to describe H. H. Stephenson’s taking three wickets with three consecutive deliveries. Fans held a collection for Stephenson, and presented him with a hat bought with the proceeds.”
As for metric and imperial (I can never remember what is which) it bugs me when someone is trying to measure something small using fractions of an inch… in my head I’m screaming something like “it’s 1mm!” Then again, it’s whatever your brain is accustomed to visualising in. There is the other issue of giving distance in travelling time; I’ve come across this numerous times when cycling and speaking to car drivers.
Thanks, I didn’t know that about the hat trick
“To err is human…” and all that. It’s a very easy mistake to make, I’m sure, but I think the pertinent adage is “if in doubt, read the instructions [carefully]”. The worst is when instructions, like recipes, give amounts in different measures, like cups and ounces, where US recipes are concerned; to me, a cup is like a block, used to measure distance in cities: meaningless! Cheers, Jon.
Yes, unfortunately I’m of the ‘if all else fails, read instructions’ school.