[yotlyolqualli]

A woman who I met online, a Lakota woman, by the name of XOtzin, gave me this name. We had been friends for a while and she came through HELL and back in the short time I knew her. Part of her transformation, was becoming more directly involved in tribal matters and ceremonies. She began to dance and now teaches it! Anyway, in the course of the time we were close, she was preparing to go "up on the hill". Those who do so, in her tribe, take a ceremonial blanket with them. She asked me to make her one. I agreed, asking her how it should look. As was XOtzin, she said.. figure it out lol. SO, after doing some research, I crocheted her an afghan. On it, I placed medicine wheels, in colors of the four directions and an image kept coming into my head. I thought it was the sun and I crocheted what I saw in my head. In the end, it looked like a spider. I was kinda worried, because I had wanted it to look like the sun. I sent it to her and it got there JUST IN TIME for her to pick it up on her way to ceremony, which was in NM... she lives in CO. She did not open the package until she got there. When she did, she was amazed. It seems, unbeknownst to me, because she never indulged the information... that while she is of the Lakota tribe, she is of the Spider clan.

Yeah.

When she came home, she gave me a name. The original name she gave me, in Nuahtl, even she couldn't pronounce. So, she came up with a name that meant basically the same thing.

Yotl Yolqualli. Yotl, in Nuahtl, means essence of woman and Yolqualli means purity of heart.

I have used this name in some fasion, ever since.