Face to the Sun

The image above was taken at the Sunflower Festival in Hood River, Oregon, in August of 2012. This morning I finished up the sunflower table runner I've been working on. As I was trying to decide on a name for it, I was looking at different sunflower quotes and poems and came across this one:

"Turn your face to the sun and the shadows follow behind you."

~ Maori Proverb

Here's the finished table runner:

Here's how it looks from the back:

The binding and backing fabric were from a kit I purchased long ago to make a bag. The bag never materialized (ha!), but the fabric has been used in several quilts. That's pretty much the end of the yellow stripe from the binding.

So in the process of looking for a name, the Resident Engineer helped me to choose "Bumblebee Playground" and that's what its name shall be. It has taken its place of honor on my breakfast bar now. It's a small quilt, finishing at 12 x 32 inches.

Also this morning, I moved the hoop for the first time on the final Vintage Tin block. As I was readying this picture for posting, I noticed that I missed a little area of stitching. It's my recurrent nightmare that I will finish off a quilt and then notice that I've left out a bit of the embroidery. Yikes.

Making good on my promise to get back to you about my Baking on Friday project from yesterday, I'm here to tell you about the Red Hot Cinnamon Apple Cake. This one is posted on the Desserts for Two website, and so you can find the recipe right here. Oh my goodness. Was this ever sinfully delicious. All of Christina Lane's recipes have worked out for me, and they have all been delicious. Nevertheless, this one seems destined to become one of my favorite little cakes of all time.

You cook the apples in the red hot candies along with some sugar and a tiny bit of water. The apples make their own liquid as they cook down. (These are Gala's.) When they're finished (about 15 minutes), you strain off the syrup. Look at how pretty they are after being cooked with the red hots.

And then there is this moist cinnamon cake and frosting. The cake would be wonderful by itself.

Pile the apples on top, and you've got something seriously to die for. Certainly, it's an O-O. (Oral orgasm.)

The apples were kept in a bowl covered with plastic wrap all afternoon while we waited like kids on Christmas morning until dinner was finished and we could legitimately move on to dessert. All afternoon, I kept uncovering it and huffing on it for deep hits of cinnamon. 

So, all of that to say that we kinda liked it. Can you tell? 

Today I need to do a little bit of housework, but then I'm going to continue on with the quilting for the Block Party quilt. After yesterday's running around, it's good to stay home and relax.