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This thread makes me want to go and get those 135mm Castamere boots and give walking higher a shot. Especially if it makes walking in 85 and 105mm heels more comfortable, or the feeling of walking in slippers.

Exactly (as I stated in the 'other' thread). UK timber is invariably sold in length increments of 300mm, which is close to the imperial foot that used to be the increment. 2.4m (7.87 feet) is a very common length and still often referred to as an '8 foot' - but don't complain if it isn't quite that long when making something!

Happy Thanksgiving to all you in the other side of the pond. It is one of the traditions I most miss about my childhood in America all those decades ago - the great turkey feast and those once a year recipes that would be trotted out. I hope you are all enjoying yours! As for me I’m sitting by the fire, listening to the wind howl outside and enjoying a tot of rum while my curry simmers in the stove - and giving thanks in my own way, and not least for the comradeship found here in this forum!

I would agree with your assessments - 7.5cm for mid heel and 10cm as a minimum for high heels, with 12cm - or in the case of @higherheels Hot Chicks or the new boots she bought, both unusually nice exceptions - being the upper limit of classy (not stripper) heels. i just use the heel height chart on the Italian Heels website to reckon my actual heel height as opposed to the nominative height

As far as I'm aware, in the UK we always give the larger dimension first for sheet materials and timber. Hence 8' x 4' and 4" x 2". In the US I believe it's always the other way round. Sheetrock is not a term used in the UK. It's always plasterboard. I don't know what term is used for the guys who instal it, but I've heard "dry wallers".

I had some spare time yesterday, and wondered if I could come up with a formula that makes it easy to convert my size 40 into size 38 proportions. What I came up with is 94%. In other words, take my actual heel height, measured in person on size 40, multiply it by 94%, get the proportional heel height for size 38. It seems to work reasonably well, but it now requires that I rethink my entire categorization of heel heights. For example, I've always thought of 10 cm as being the minimum to be considered a "high" heel. Looks like I'm now going to have to up that to 10.7 cm, or almost 4 1/4". Interestingly, I have an oddly large number of shoes with that incline. It all make sense, now. It's probably an upscaling of a 4 inch heel from size 7 (38). I suppose it fits my new standard anyway--a 10 cm heel in size 40, which I now have to discount to 9.4 cm, feels remarkably mid-heelish these days. Here is my mental categorization, translated to size 38: Less than 5 cm is a flat, 7.5 cm is the lowest mid-heel, 10 cm is the lowest high heel. I'll go with 12 cm and above as being Very High, since I can't walk in them properly! I am trying to decide whether I'm going to convert to full-on metric the next time I do a shoe inventory. I'm kind of inclined (no pun intended) to do that, but since I do this for my personal entertainment anyway, why should I? Inside my weary head, I still think in inches, though I'm a whiz at translating to cm quickly, thanks in large part to my immigrant wife.

It's interesting that you refer to the plywood, et al., as being 8 x 4. At least in my locale, we would never refer to it that way. It's 4 x 8 here. Plasterboard we typically call sheet rock, though I think that's a brand name. Drywall is the generic U.S. term. I'm sure if I traveled 500 miles in any direction this would change slightly, but here in central Iowa, the person who installs said material is a drywaller, but we turn the brand name into a verb to describe the process of installation. Example of a conversation you might actually hear on a construction site: "Are you gonna rock that wall right now? "Uhhh, I was planning on it, yeah." "You know the fire alarm guys haven't finished that yet?" "Well, what if we just rock one side for now?" "They can prolly make that work. I'll let 'em know."

You didn’t miss much if you were going to be staying at McMurdo. Pole is pretty cool though. I got booted out of Palmer once. A few of us were whooping it up with a few of their guys and the base commander broke it up at 3am and ordered us back to our ship. There’s not exactly a great sense of joie de vivre amongst the NSF and military types that run the American bases

Well anyway, the point is that some of us have jobs that will allow the wearing of heels at work, and some of us do not. It has nothing to do with our professional qualifications or opportunities. It's more to do with circumstances. I doubt I would wear heels to work, even if I were in the "office." Though were I in the office, I would sure long to.

I pulled my name out of consideration for a 6-month scientific assignment for NASA in Antarctica in the late 70's.

Yes but your job doesn’t take you to Antarctica, Papua New Guinea, Chad or the Darien Gap - mine does and heels are not useful in those places, but otherwise I’m in heels at work, and since I’ve largely stopped travelling, in heels full time!

I'm more like @higherheels, I have a professional job so I can wear what I want at home and when I go in, and for me that's high heels.

I have the luxury of being self employed so when I am not travelling on assignment I am working from my kitchen table and can wear whatever I please. Theoretically I can wear whatever I please on assignments, but most of my assignments are in wild remote areas where hiking boots or engineering boots are the only sensible option. Even then, though, I do have some knee boots with the right soles

Ah, of course if you have to wear specific work shoes you don't have that much time left for heels. I have an office job so I can wear whatever I want at work, that's a plus when it comes to heels.

In the UK, as others have mentioned, you get plasterboard in sheets of 2400x 1200mm (8x4 metric feet) and plywood etc in 2440x1220 (8x4 proper feet). When you have that sort of thing, it's often convenient to refer to 300mm as a metric foot.

They are not. I purposefully diverted the off-topic conversation to here, where I don't care what we talk about. Do you know one of the meanest things you can do that is basically harmless if you don't count other people's wasted time and frustration? Throw a good sized handful of 12 mm bolts into a box of 1/2" bolts. I don't quite understand how the metric foot works--why not just use the SI unit? I do confess that when it comes to heel height, I think of 10 cm/100 mm as being four inch heels, and 150 mm as being six inch, even though it's not exact. So I suppose I get the rough approximation extrapolated to 300 mm/12 inch. What I don't understand is in what context is it used that way?

On a typical weekday, I spend anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, but averaging 45 minutes, walking in heels of 8 to 11 cm, depending upon the weather and my mood. I then effectively spend the next 12 hours in work boots, by the time you add in lunch and commuting each way. With my feet the way they are, I always bring a second pair of socks, which I change at lunch. If I do not do this, I am miserable all afternoon. If I had to go 16 hours in boots, I'd go through three pairs of socks a day. Unless I have somewhere to go after work, such as church choir rehearsal or the occasional special event, I have various slip-on sandals that I use as house slippers, but all are 7 cm or less. That is why I wonder what my life would be like if I could wear heels to work every day, such as the red patent Via Spiga shoes I wore Sunday.

I think that the posts from mlrose and at9 are responding in the wrong thread - see

I’m so looking forward to being able to say the same about 12cm heels!

Pretty much the same for me except I don't do kayaking. @Shyheels Yes that's the great thing about it. I never had a problem with 12 cm heels, but now they become even more comfortable. Now I'm even more confused about units in the UK, it probably can't get more complicated 😀

I often find myself doing sketches at a scale of 1mm represents 1". Just seems convenient for all sorts of things that I do. In the UK we also have metric feet (300mm).

@Puffer I'm a 16ths of an inch guy myself. Sometimes I catch some flack for it, because most guys round to 8ths of an inch. I think this is part of the reason why my stuff tends to look better than average. But see, if we just went to millimeters, that's even a little bit finer than 16ths, but doesn't give you a headache like looking at a rule that's marked in 32nds. Then everybody's work might look a little better.

UK anachronisms also include: milk bought in either pints or litres (according to the seller); beer on draught in pints but when in cans or bottles it is metric (330, 440 or 500 ml etc). Timber sold in length increments of 300mm (the 'metric foot') and plasterboard which was 8' x 4' now 'shrunk' to 2400 x 1200mm, but most other sheet material (e.g. MDF, plywood) still 2440 x 1220mm (equivalent to 8' x 4')! And model railways, for example, are commonly built to a scale of 4mm:1 foot (UK) or 3.5mm:1 foot (US and Europe), both using a track gauge of 16.5mm (which is therefore too narrow to represent standard gauge of 4' 8.5" in the UK but almost spot-on for US/Europe models). You need your wits about you when doing construction work or model-making, but we are used to the mixture. I still 'think better' in imperial when doing joinery or plumbing etc but will often use millimetres when dealing with small measurements, as working in, say, 64ths of an inch is rather tiresome.

One thing I have been so pleased about as a result of this high heel challenge is the ease with which I now get about in my 10cm stilettos. While I am slowly getting better in my 12cm ones, the improvement at the 10cm height is really gratifying and noticeable - so much so that I find myself tempted simply to wear my 10cm boots for the sheer joy of it, at the expense of practicing with my 12cm ones. The past two days I’ve been wearing them 12 hours a day - admittedly not walking much, just puttering about, making meals and coffee and writing at my desk, but being in 10cm stilettos is starting to feel natural and intuitive. I like it

I wear my heels 12 hours on most days and sometimes 16 hours. Only time I'm in flats is when I'm barefooted or working in my garden or kayaking or skiing. Today its my Nine West Samreno suede block heeled knee highs, 10 cm.