Sunday, October 21, 2007

Who is using the Brittish System?

As I am thinking about writing my book I would like to make it available to the majority of English speaking sections of The Salvation Army. Of course Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom use the English System. As I think about it logic would dictate the The United States is the only group that uses the US system of Knitting Needles.

This may sound like a dah moment. What is the best way to make an international book. Should I make two versions or put all of the international measurements in the books.

By the way you can thank Metal and Knit for getting me thinking about this. She said that she wanted a copy of the book. I understand that people alter things slightly to suit their needs. What are the pitfall that must be avoided to make a good international pattern. Personally I tend to think of all knitting needle in metric terms. This probably has something to do with my learning to knit from French Canadians.In my needle stash are 7.5 and 7.75 mm knitting needles. Personally I think of these as the all purpose needle for worsted yarn. I suppose most American tend to think of 5.5(9US) to 6.5 (10.5US) as the general needles for that type of yarn. I also tend to knit tightly on occasion.

So my beloved Seven millimeter needles are out for the book. What other pit fall am I not thinking of? Post if you can think of something.

By the way I am on Ravelry as Zeeppo just plain Zeeppo. There is a group for this book that currently has three members. I will have all the text done by the end of this month. There is still some work to do on pattern and I have added a couple section on the advice of others.

Well this is turning out to be a fun thing. I am still working on the scifi book. It is a novel though and a ton of editing will be going into it. The knitting book will have considerably less work to get it ready to be published.

Since I am self publishing both I imagine the knitting book will be done first.

Well be safe out there and keep your stick on the ice.

4 comments:

DDancer said...

Uhmm... Worsted weight is typically knit on US7-9's

Anonymous said...

Erm, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand use the metric system and have done so for quite a few years.

the fiddlin' fool said...

If you were to publish KnitML for the pattern, you wouldn't have to worry so much about internationalization.

At least that's the theory.

catsmum said...

If you notice Zeeppo, Ravelry [ which is where I found you ] gives both sizes - 4mm/US size whatever.
Most international knitters are pretty savvy at translating US stuff having had years of practice - but the one main piece of advice I would offer is to not suggest a particular yarn just by name assuming everyone will know what it is. Describe the weight as ravelry does eg - fingering /4 ply/ and the wpi as well.

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