Y is for.....

I wrote my Y is for... post a week or so ago and Blogger ate it. I'm finally getting back to it. It's been almost a month since I've posted a Wordplay post. In part I can blame busyness and that "brain fog" thing that us "old folk" get sometimes (menopause is so much damn fun. NOT) But I also have to blame reluctance to finish up. Sigh. All good things must come to an end, eh.

yarn - I was a knitter and crocheter before I ever discovered quilting. I'm not particularly interested in crochet anymore, but I've been doing quite a bit of knitting in the last couple of years. Easier to sit on the couch or train or porch and knit then to set up the studio for fabric work. And faster gratification.

yarn - as in, a good story. Love one of those too!

Yosemite - this was one of those places I figured would be fun to visit but I wasn't in a hurry to go to as, eh, I'd seen a thousand photos of the place. Of course a photo never captures a place completely and the first time I finally did visit, I spent the first drive through the valley with my jaw dropped to my chin and my hands on my chest in awe (fortunately I was on a bus, not driving). It was so breathtaking! We were just gonna spend the afternoon but our car had other plans for us and broke down on the way up the river canyon. We ended up with an emergency camping spot and a day and a half to see the sights. It was the one and only time I packed the tent - "just in case" - intuition comes in handy on occasion.

yarrow - one of my favorite herbs. It's taken over my flower beds. Once I was with the kids at a park in the middle of the wilds of Montana when Sam decided to try to take the tip of his finger off in the handle of a water pump. I had nothing with me - no bandages, nothing. Fortunately yarrow, which will stop bleeding, can't think of the medical term for it - antihemmorhagic? - anyway, it was growing all around us. I chewed it up and wrapped Sam's finger in and it worked beautifully. Boy, was my stomach queasy after that little adventure! Blech. But Sam still has a working finger. And yarrow is a very pretty herb. I've won a number of ribbons entering it in our county fair.

yardage - what quilter doesn't adore yardage! And I have lots of it to adore!

York - we wouldn't have gone to York if a working class fellow in a truck hadn't pulled over to see if we were lost, a bedraggled pair (William and I) dragging suitcases up a long hill in Conwy, Wales. He insisted we had to go, so we did. And I fell in love with the Shambles, a little bit of medieval street still thriving with shops hundreds of years later. It's like getting lost in Diagon Alley!

yam - I love yams, sweet potatoes, squash, all that sort of yummy winter storage food

yard sale - I think we've already firmly established that I'm part treasure hunter, musta been a pirate in a past life, eh? ARGH! So yard sales are such fun. I haven't been to a lot of them in the last few years however - not enough time to plan for them (mainly I just go to ones because I see it set up and swerve to the side of the road at the last minute) and remember, I'm trying to reduce what I own, not add to it.

yellow - a lot of quilters don't like yellow in a quilt. I have a quilting friend who is infamous for her fear of using yellow in her quilts - LOL. Me, I rather like it's audacity, it's refusal not to be cheerful. And not just in quilts. Who doesn't love a hillside covered in daffodils!

year - I put this on my list and can't for the life of me remember why now, but I figured I'd leave it in here and see if it occurs to me later. But I have this to say about it, off the top of my head - the year sure does speed by faster nowadays then it used to!

yearnings - who doesn't have them. Sometimes I wish I could be more content with life "as is", sometimes I think yearning for something new, different, or far away is what makes life appealing.

yeti - William wanted to be a yeti for Halloween a number of years ago. Eventually we found the perfect yeti mask and I set about to be a good mother and make him a shaggy white costume to match. Alas, I'm not that good a mother. I don't get along well with patterns and the shaggy fabric just about did me in. I called up a friend at the last minute, who doesn't even celebrate Halloween, and she came through for me and finished making the costume. And that's how good a friend she is!

yoga - I used to do yoga back in my early twenties and I have to say I was surprised even then, and still remember all these years later, by how much better I felt when I kept up the practice. But life and and kids and what not got in the way and I haven't done it in decades although I've been meaning to start it back up again for years. There's even a class in town, or at least there was the last time I checked.

Yule - You call it Christmas, I call it Yule. Or, truly, I call it both, as we still have residual Christmas traditions from my childhood and my childrens' childhoods. I'm not gonna throw out all the traditions just because we've changed over the years. As if I could, tradtions don't work that way, and the family wouldn't take too kindly to it. Boy oh boy, you should have heard the ruckus the year I tried to put up a theme tree with new decorations and not use the old decorations. But old traditions have been tweaked and new traditions have been added and stuck and for me now, it's all about the turning of the wheel and the return of the sun. And it's about getting together with family and hot cocoa and peppermint candy canes and brightly wrapped gifts and candles glowing and fir trees scenting the room and houses decorated against the long nights sand holiday music and.....

yes - there's a lot of talk about "Just say no!" Which is good advice if you're talking about dangerous drugs or people asking you to sit on a committee. But it's equally important to know when to "Just say yes!" Don't think about it - just say yes to jumping in the water, calling up an old friend, eating dessert, dancing in the street, giving someone a hug. Yes!

yin/yang - y'know (and there's another Y word for you. I use it alot. "y'know") the older I get the more I see the world not as yin or yang but as both simultaneously. I've not only gotten less confused by the concept but I now understand, in a way I doubt I can express, that life is always both. There's no peak without the valley. There's no sadness if it hasn't followed some joy. It's not really saying yes if you don't have the option to say no. Summer doesn't delight if one hasn't longed for it through a long dark winter. Two sides to every coin. Two sides to every argument.

yum - or more specifically - YUM! - I love to eat. I suppose if I had to, I could eat to live. But I would much rather live to eat.