The Old Folks Home

[Cynthia12]

I got some of those vintage calendar towels, with me and my sister's birth year on them. Was thinking of making something for my mom... totes for the farmers market? Pillows for the couch? Bread bags? Any other ideas?

Flour sac..apron..frame them..so many different ways to frame them.

Some more time consuming..and money ideas..a table topper..with glass..but could be done without a glass top. A cute small picnic basket as a decoration for them..hang them, drape them around and in it.

Not sure how many you got..but curtains would be easy...for you to do.

Use tabs to hang them.

 

[vehve]

When I first sat the nursing boards in the USA to get my RN here, I had to do a bit of study on the old time measurements - Grains X for Aspirin.

While I am quite happy using inches, miles and gallons, it would be great to have a universal measurement system.

They are just numbers after all. 

In archery, arrowheads are weighed in grains. It's confusing. I understand that imperial units have a base in easy to understand everyday things, like a foot being about the length of a foot. But it just doesn't work as easily when you need to be exact.

 

[vehve]

Thanks for the conversion measurements vehve I do appreciate it very much. 
x2 we use cup, tsp., tbsp., quart, gallon and so on. Sorry I was lost.   

I usually convert a gallon to about 4 liters (close enough for both the US and British gallon), making a quart about a liter.

 

[subhanalah]

I usually convert a gallon to about 4 liters (close enough for both the US and British gallon), making a quart about a liter.

I do this as well.

 

[ozexpat]

The British gallon is 5 liters but do they still use it?

I thought they use metric system

 

[vehve]

The British gallon is 5 liters but do they still use it?

I thought they use metric system

Older people still use the old measurements to some extent. The imperial gallon is ~4.5 liters, US gallon is ~3,8 liters. We don't have competing units of measurement here, but for us it was the currency that was difficult for some people. We switched to euros in 2002 (although earlier for banking), and still some people convert the euros to Finnish marks to figure out if something is expensive or not. Inflation has made that pretty useless by now, and not that many people do it anymore, but five years back you could still hear "2 euros? Are you crazy? That's 12 marks!". Euro calculators with a 5.94573 conversion button built in sold like crazy in the beginning of the millennium.

 

[CanuckBock]

The British gallon is 5 liters but do they still use it?

I thought they use metric system

Even Canada is SUPPOSE to be metric and we all use a combination of imperial too. The UK and Canada seem to have combined both imperial and metric...I am sure the lingo is most confusing!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_units

Saying you are 5 foot 11 inches tall, buying a "gallon of milk," having a troy ounce of silver, etc. still is understood quite well. Kilometers and miles are used interchangeably and most modern vehicles here have miles and kilometer per hour graduations on the speedometers. I tend now to know that 20C is a comfortable room temperature and water freezes at 0C and boils at 100C. That conversion part made it simpler to remember plus the weather channels/stations all report in Celsius so we HAD to get with the new program or unexpectedly freeze our buns off 'cause we shoulda bundled up by buttoning up the woolly undies--Flaps UP on the pair of red itchy Long Johns.

US gallon is 3.785 liters and the British gallon is 4.546 litres...difference of a fair bit in multiples, eh?

I'll carry two five "gallon" pails of water but buy fuel by the litre. Not sure which gallon (of water) I am using either??

So there can be three units used to measure things by...imperial, metric, and US customary...all of which don't make the fish that got away stories any more believable--some tall tales should never actually BE measured, now should they...LOL

Tara

 

[vehve]

Even Canada is SUPPOSE to be metric and we all use a combination of imperial too. The UK and Canada seem to have combined both imperial and metric...I am sure the lingo is most confusing!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_units

Saying you are 5 foot 11 inches tall, buying a "gallon of milk," having a troy ounce of silver, etc. still is understood quite well. Kilometers and miles are used interchangeably and most modern vehicles here have miles and kilometer per hour graduations on the speedometers. I tend now to know that 20C is a comfortable room temperature and water freezes at 0C and boils at 100C. That conversion part made it simpler to remember plus the weather channels/stations all report in Celsius so we HAD to get with the new program or unexpectedly freeze our buns off 'cause we shoulda bundled up by buttoning up the woolly undies--Flaps UP on the pair of red itchy Long Johns.

US gallon is 3.785 liters and the British gallon is 4.546 litres...difference of a fair bit in multiples, eh?

I'll carry two five "gallon" pails of water but buy fuel by the litre. Not sure which gallon (of water) I am using either??

So there can be three units used to measure things by...imperial, metric, and US customary...all of which don't make the fish that got away stories any more believable--some tall tales should never actually BE measured, now should they...LOL

Tara

I forgot to mention distances. One inch is 2.54 centimeters, a foot is 30.48 cm, and a yard is 0.9144 meters, so you can roughly convert a yard to a meter, and divide meters by 3 to get an approximation in feet, and multiply inches by 2.5 for centimeters. A kilometer is 1000 meters, and a mile is 1.609 km.

*Edit* And the fish of course use the nautical mile, or 1.852 kilometers.

 

[superchemicalgirl]

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. I don't have many - two each of our birth years. If this goes well, I may try to locate BF and his sisters at an estate sale or ebay and make something for his mom, too.

 

[Bunnylady]

Did I say something about it being "monsoon season" around here?!

Oops! Now I'm all muddy. Better not do that again.

We have gotten at least 2 inches of rain on three days during the last week, and have gotten measurable quantities on a couple more. Some folks around here have gotten a lot more - "location, location, location" doesn't only count in real estate. It started raining at about 10 o'clock yesterday morning, and rained all day. Fortunately, the real storm cells stayed to our south, so we only got about 3" total. The weather service says we are setting up with the same pattern today; we've already had one shower pass through this morning.

On a different note, I found a fragment of shed snake skin in the workshop yesterday. It had stripes - Green Rat Snake, by the look of it. Anybody know how long it would take a snake to slither 10 miles?