Caitlin needed a potholder for her ceramic bowl. Apparently it's really hot coming out of the microwave. She wanted one that was longer than they usually come so that you could wrap it around the bowl and use both hands. I just made it out of some random scrap yarn I had in my box. She originally just wanted it to be brown, but I refused to make something that was just a brown square, so I mad the spiral design with a tapestry crochet technique. I'm actually kind of proud of how it turned out. And of my spacial reasoning skills. They're not normally quite that good, since I was working without a chart of any kind. The random black dot is where my spacial reasoning skills died for a moment, but then I realized I was making a mistake. I didn't want to pull out two rows of stitches though, considering that it is, after all, a potholder.
As for the name, the pattern just looked very Navajo to me. I dunno.