It's hot

It's hot. Hot as in 106° in Southlake right now, and the predicted high for today is 109°. It's 3:28pm, so we're half an hour into the high demand period for electricity. Ercot, the people who control these things, are begging people in our area to cut back on electricity usage between 3 and 7pm on hot days like this, or face rolling blackouts. And seriously, I don't want to be anywhere with no AC and no fans on an afternoon like this! So at 3pm, we dutifully reduce our electricity consumption. Our thermostat automatically goes up to 83°, we turn the ceiling fans on, we lower any shades that aren't already lowered, and try to sit as still as possible. And, of course, no stove, no oven, no washing machine or dryer, no dishwasher, no unnecessary lights…no anything electric we can get by without. The lights thing is especially hard, since we have as much glass (windows and doors) as possible covered. We have a bunch of Redi Shades everywhere, little $5 paper accordion window shades that actually come with an adhesive strip so they don't need any hardware at all. (Well, the ones stuck to the sheer curtains in the breakfast nook have a few straight pins in them, but I added those.) They help a lot, but it makes the house—which is designed to let in tons of light—very dark, and makes me feel a little like a mole.

At least all that sitting still means that I get a lot of reading and knitting done. I finished the Anthro-Inspired Scarflet, from AllFreeKnitting.com.

Mine doesn't have the little pearly flower thing. It's made of Lion Wool in Cobalt Blue, to match the Fire on the Mountain Clogger jackets. (Yeah, I danced with them for 16 years, and my sister is still a member. It's for her. If you follow that link above, she's the blonde in the left-hand photo.) It doesn't look nearly this delicate, since it's worsted weight, and the edges are curling like crazy.

I'll take a picture of my version after it's blocked and no longer looks like a big blue tube. (Very curly edges.)

In the meantime, not generating heat in the kitchen is stretching my cooking imagination to the limit. We've had chicken salad two days in a row (first Carol's Sesame then a my own version of DC that doesn't involve the horror of Miracle Whip), and we'll be ordering pizza tomorrow. Slow cookers aren't too bad, but on the extremely hot days (like today), it's best to avoid those, as well.

So no cooking today. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go finish that novel Tevilla gave me. And maybe dabble in some socks.