A week or so ago, I was admiring this skirt on etsy and decided to pull the trigger on it (because I am worth all the pretty things).

Because it is custom, I thought it advisable to verify my measurements against the sizes and grabbed the tape-measure from my drawer – the tape measure which was included in a small collection of supplies bundled with my shamefully under-used overlocker.

I measured in inches because, well it is easier, and was confounded by the results it gave – on no planet am I smaller than a US size 0. Measured again, same result. Measured in cm – US size 4, which is correct. So I assumed there was something wrong with the size chart.

But with so many sales and great feedback how could the size chart be so wrong? I used a couple of online conversion tools to convert my cm to inches and got a higher number of inches and the correct size. So then I assumed my tape measure was just wildly wrong and wrote myself a reminder note on it.

A couple of days later I dragged out a tape measure I knew was accurate to check just how wrong my original was (see below). While I was doing that, I noticed the Chinese symbol just after the 1 on the white tape measure.

What if there are such things as Chinese inches?

And who knew? There are!

Clearly the lessons from this are – beware freebie tape measures and always use metric!