Weird crafting question

[dianec42]

In my capacity as know-it-all, I recently stumbled upon something I don't know, and it's driving me nuts.

I asked on Reddit, but apparently I did a terrible job of phrasing the question, so allow me a brief story time here:

Aida cloth and tapestry needles both come in various sizes/scales. For aida cloth, it's 14/16/18 etc; for needles it's 24/26/28. For both, the higher the number the smaller the thing.

And for aida cloth (or evenweave) the numbers actually mean something - 14-count aida has 14 squares to the inch, for example.

Question: What about needle sizes? Do the numbers mean anything in absolute scale? Like, you could fit 28 size-28 needles in a centimeter or something? Or are they just arbitrary and relative?

Please tell me I'm not the only person who wonders about these things! Lie to me if you must.

P.S. I've also posted this over in the cross stitch community, where someone has already answered... not the question I asked. Did I stutter?

Comments

[rmd]

My initial guess is it's related to wire gage, aka 'awg' measurements, but I have no idea. However, this is the internet so I'll pontificate anyways.