After a parade of One Block Wonders, I decided to make a pineapple. The book I have is called A Piece of Cake, and has some clever ways to simplify what is a challenging pattern. Each twelve inch block has forty pieces, and truth be told, there is a bunch of wasted fabric. I decided to try to precut the strips, in the interest of conservation, and it worked. After each block there was a fistful of scraps instead of a plateful. 

I wondered if the author had thought of this too, but then realized that the book is intended to coax a tentative quilter into new terrain. The book is already sixty pages long, and explaining the steps I discovered might easily overwhelm someone. But since I have made a stack of pineapples before, I get the gist. 

Two afternoons passed pleasantly as the blocks grew. At first I only planned to work for a couple of hours, but once momentum arrived I kept going. Soon it was finished except for the hand binding. 

I am grateful for people who compose books so that I might more easily tackle fresh projects. It no doubt involves multiple decisions about how much detail to go into. You want to be informative without being laborious. 

When I think of the effort God went to to prescribe a life of integrity, I am humbled. He wants to make it clear without being overwhelming. The Ten Commandments contain the instructions for creating a beautiful person. When people skimp on rules like telling the truth, and not committing adultery things fall apart. The directives themselves are simple. But what if we go more deeply? Does lying include deception? Omission of the facts? Is stealing restricted to possessions, or can it refer to stolen dreams? It lists coveting houses and servants, but what about craving another person's success?

Many years ago I learned them in their original language. Hebrew has an efficiency of sounds such that the commandment not to kill is only two words. I remember them. 

Lo tirtzach.

I recited them when I was in third grade, and again when I taught third grade. It was like a song, and since none of the children had the slightest inclination to murder, it was easy to promise. Cross our hearts and hope to die. 

But the tendency to hurt one another slithers in, as our sense of goodness falls to the floor like scraps.

Forty is a poignant number in the Bible. The Children of Israel wandered in the wilderness for as many years. Jesus prayed in the desert for forty days. Having that number show up in my quilt illustrates for me that such struggles can be a pattern for great loveliness.