Hello!!! My blog has a new look to it! If you’ve been here before, you will see that Lizy Tish Knits is now Loops and Lavender. If you haven’t been here before, ignore that and WELCOME! By the way, I’m Liz, the woman behind the curtain (and the dog, and the car, and the yarn, and the hat, and the hair…):

The “new” blog will have a lot of the same content as the old blog (for newbies: you can go back and read my old posts, or just wait for the riveting new content), but the new name reflects more that just knitting and more of what I want to blog about.

The “Loops” part of the new name refers to THE KNITTING part of the blog. Get it? Loops of yarn?? I’m still a knitting addict and I’m still knitting ALL THE TIME. So, I’ll still be posting my works-in-progress and finished projects, and I’ll still tell you about all of my struggles and successes in the process.

The “Lavender” part of the new name refers to ALL THE OTHER THINGS I will be, and have been, posting on the blog, but with the new twist of how they relate to my long, seemingly never-ending journey to ease my stress and the symptoms of my fibromyalgia diagnosis. So, you will still see my book posts, family posts, cooking posts, drag racing (my husband, not me) posts, cat/dog posts, but you will also see more of a wellness slant to many of these posts.

I’m going out on a limb by talking about this diagnosis, which I have been dealing with for many, many years. (Only some of my friends and family know about it – and now a whooooole lot more will! Ack!) Fibromyalgia is considered a chronic illness, although not in the official medical books and therefore a stigma exists about it and whether it is a real thing. With my fibromyalgia diagnosis, I deal with pain, inflammation, and anxiety on an almost daily basis. That makes me stressed. Stress is a major contributor to my fibromyalgia symptoms. It’s a circular circus that I’m trying hard to tame.

Ugh, that sounds a little heavy, right? And you know what? It is! But a major part of lightening the load is taking charge of the things I can control and letting go of the things I can’t control. One of the things I can control is what I do to address/ease my symptoms. Another thing I can control is how/how much to talk about it in this blog. Somewhere along the way, I hope my blog content will help others, if not with fibromyalgia, then with the sprinkles of humor and positivity I try to put in every post.

So, why did I choose the word “Lavender” for the ALL THE OTHER THINGS part of the blog? Lavender is a perennial herb that has calming, anti-inflammatory, and mood-boosting properties and it has THE BEST AROMA IN THE WORLD.

I started growing lavender in my garden two summers ago and harvested the flowers/buds to dry/use them. That’s my harvest and my garden up there. It is a very comforting aroma for me and I use it often in many areas of my life as a fibromyalgiac. (Ha – I think I just made that word up! Yup, I just googled it. Not a word. Until now. I’m going to use it all the time.)

Plus, its flowers are THE LOVELIEST COLOR IN THE WORLD. I love, Love, LOVE practically any version of purple. And lookee here, we made another circular reference because you will see a lot of LAVENDER (the color) in my KNITTING.

I’m happy to be back blogging and I’m happy you are here.