Remember Johnny Carson's line? When somebody gave out a bizarre bit of conversation stopping information? Well, I found one for myself!

It's from a new book I pre-ordered from AQS called "Thread Work Unraveled" by Sarah Ann Smith. I just wanted to see what a person could say about thread that would fill a whole book. I wasn't disappointed, even though I'm only on page 8, with my first factoid.

" A medium-weight piecing thread labeled #50 means that 50 kilometers of that thread weighs one kilogram. "

Can this possibly be true? I can't help but feel somebody out there (namely Sarah Ann Smith) is pulling my leg. Can the metric system really DO that? And more importantly, who did it FIRST? Who was fooling around one day at the factory mill, had an extra martini at lunch, and came back to say "Hey you guys! Gimme a kilo, I'm gonna tie it to my bumper and see how far I get!"

If you're really interested in accurate measurements--and what quilter isn't?--hit the Wikipedia article on 'kilogram.' It's an eye opener about people who like accurate measurement and exactly the lengths they'll go to get one.

Maybe Sarah Ann meant to say that a gram of thread is 50 meters long. THAT I can believe. ;) It also means for $2.80 per 150 meter spool of my Mettler silk finish cotton, I'm getting three grams of thread. Trust me when I say that works out to $423.35 per pound, more valuable than pure silver which is only $267.68 for a pound. So...silver is actually cheap compared to Mettler thread. Kind of puts things into perspective.

I decided to take it all with a grain of salt, although it leaves me wondering how many grains of salt are in a pinch of salt, and how can I ever relax while I'm making a pie crust again. Not that I was ever very relaxed making pie.

It's not as easy as people say.