I am still laid off from my regular job, but keeping busy anyway.  Soap sales continue to be great and I make soap nearly every day now to keep up!  I just updated the website with new scents; although I need to get pictures of about a dozen of them yet.

​
I am selling at the farmer's market in Maxwell pretty much every Sunday afternoon from 1-3 pm.  The turnout of vendors and customers has been amazing!  It has been the most fun market I have ever sold at.  There is live music and several kinds of food and treats.  The setting on the edge of a park is so nice, I see people getting food and siting under the shade trees to eat it!  This Thursday I plan to start selling at the Farmers Market in Huxley, IA from 4-7 pm; at least until I get called back to work.

Have you noticed how popular tie dye seems to be lately?  Maybe it's because everyone has been staying home.  A few weeks ago my grandaughter and I had a fun time trying it out.  Here are some of the results:
​

Life here at Thistlewood Manor has really slowed down, and it's kind of nice.  I am laid off from my regular part time job at an axe throwing club and all the events I would usually sell soap at have been cancelled, however online business has been brisk.  I really appreciate all of you who have bought soap from me!
​
​I am keeping busy with making more soap as well as house and yard projects.  I started plants a few weeks ago and they are already a few inches tall!  The beans are really going to town.  I also started tomatoes, bell and hot peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, pumpkins and watermelon.

This year we bought a grow light for the first time and it has made such a difference.  I have never had really good luck with seedlings, they always got so leggy and weak.  This time they just shot out of the ground within days and are looking so healthy.

We are also busy with the chickens.  We have 13 laying eggs now, so we average about 10 a day.  There is nothing better than fresh eggs!  While we are getting quite a few, we are not ready to start selling yet as there are not quite enough extra to guarantee for our customers.  Currently we just give away a few dozen here and there.  We recently got a big Brahma Rooster so we are hoping to hatch our own chicks soon.  We also bought 11 little Black Breasted German Phoenix chicks and are hoping at least half are hens so we will get more eggs.
​

I have been working on some new products with all this down time and want to share the latest with you.  It's not always easy to wash our hands frequently, so I put together a little travel soap box you can take with you.  All you need is your own bottle of water and one of these little soaps to scrub away the germs!  Check them out under the Soap tab.
​

This year I was more ready than ever.  I had over 600 bars of soap made, dozens of beard oils and balms, rollers of essential oils, wooden combs, woven inkle bands and nalbound wool hats.  It was going to be our best sales year ever!  We were even packed two weeks before and Thursday morning we woke up excited to head to our favorite event.  We hooked up the trailer and headed out on time, planning to have dinner at Lamberts "Home of the throwed rolls" in Sikeston, MO and had a hotel room waiting in Batesville, MS.
Not an hour down the road the truck started getting loud and it was obvious we had a problem.  Greg got out and looked, sure enough, we were missing a muffler.  We backtracked and found it; it didn't look good.  We found a nearby muffler shop who agreed to replace it immediately and so dropped off the truck and walked down to Wendy's for lunch.  While we waited I kept monitoring Facebook and the signs the event would be cancelled kept becoming stronger.  Sure enough, just as our truck was fixed, we got the word; Gulf Wars 2019 had been cancelled.
Well, glad that we weren't farther down the road, but sad about missing our spring vacation and concerned about how the income loss would affect us, we headed back home.  Once there we began to unpack.
​

Here are all the bins of soap sitting in my shop waiting to be unpacked.  There are over 40 different fragrances, plus beard products, combs, soap dishes, beard kits, nalbound hats, inkle bands and more.  I am now working on photographing each one and putting them up on the website so people can buy them.  I am hoping to have a "porch sale" next weekend as well so local people can come and buy!  

​I figure it will take me about 25 hours to upload everything I have, so please be patient as I get it all up and then get orders filled.  Thanks to everyone for supporting me!

There is an old story that dates back to at least 1438 that tells of 4 thieves who robbed people who were ill from the black plague, yet never got sick themselves.  When finally apprehended, they went before a judge who promised to be lenient with them if they told him how they managed to stay healthy.  As they had been chemists before their lives of crime, they explained how they had created a special mixture of essential oils, including clove, cinnamon, lemon and rosemary that they wore on themselves and their clothing that kept the germs away.  You may have heard of this potion as "thieves oil".  Since that name has been copyrighted, I have chosen to call my own blend of these oils "plague ban". 
You might wonder what is so special about these particular essential oils, so I have researched them and here are my findings.  
Clove oil is both antimicrobial and antifungal.  https://www.healthline.com/health/clove-essential-oil#benefits
Cinnamon oil is antibacterial and disinfectant.  https://www.healthline.com/health/cinnamon-oil#benefits
Lemon oil is antibacterial and antifungal.  https://www.newdirectionsaromatics.com/blog/products/all-about-lemon-oil.html
Rosemary oil is anti bacterial and antifungal.   https://www.newdirectionsaromatics.com/blog/products/all-about-rosemary-oil.html
This is just a quick overview, please follow the links and do your own research to learn more!  As you can see, those chemists turned thieves may have been onto something.
While I don't make any medical claims about my products, I do make a point to use high quality essential oils in them.  In this flu and cold season, washing hands frequently is the best way to keep yourself healthy.  Any soap is a good choice, but I like to recommend my handmade soaps because they are moisturizing rather than drying and that's important when you wash your hands a lot.  I use my plague ban oils in both my soap and roller bottles you can apply to your skin.

 Making soap can seem mysterious, dangerous and difficult until you actually learn how.  There are several different methods and all can make great soap, but the method I like is called hot process.  One of the reasons I like it best is because I think it is the most like the way our ancestors would have made it; mixing the ingredients in a pot on the stove until it was cooked and then pouring it into a mold.

​The most difficult part of making soap is measuring.  When people first began to make soap they used trial and error and when it worked, passed those recipes down to others.  Now I use an online tool called a soap calculator.  I can enter my ingredients and the size of the recipe, then adjust amounts until I get the qualities I want (I like hard, sudsy bars of soap), and the calculator tells me how much lye I need to use to get the chemical reaction that makes soap.  That is so much easier than running rain water through ashes, straining it and then floating an egg to see if it is strong enough!  Yes, that is how lye used to be made.  Once I have perfected my recipe I carefully measure all the ingredients on my kitchen scale.  If I do it correctly, the soap will turn out just right every time!

Once I have measured the oils I place them in a crockpot so the hard oils (lard or coconut) can melt.  Every oil has different properties.  Lard makes a harder, whiter bar.  Coconut is cleansing and sudsy.  Castor is moisturizing and conditioning.  A good soap calculator will tell you the qualities of each oil.  While I am waiting for the oils to melt, I mix the lye with water.  It gets hot, so I am careful not to get burned.  Once the oils are melted I can add the lye/water mixture, then let them cook until it gets thick like mashed potatoes.  This is a picture of finished soap in the pot.  I then put it in wooden molds to dry.

Once in the molds, they must dry at least 24 hours before I unmold and cut the bars.  Each mold makes 13 5 oz bars.  After cutting, they need to wait several more weeks to dry so the bars will be harder and last longer.  After they are dry enough, they are labeled and put into boxes to take to shows and events to sell.

​

Clean up is easy, I just put all the dirty dishes in the sink and fill with hot water.  After soaking for half an hour they nearly clean themselves!  Because the soap has been cooked there is no lye left to harm my skin.

​I hope you enjoyed learning a little about how I make soap; if you are interested in a hands on class, let me know!

I am often asked why I call my soap business "Thistlewood Manor", so I thought I'd fill you in.  It all started in 2005.  I'd been through a rough divorce and after 2 years finally received back child support.  During my previous 12 year marriage we had moved 21 times and I wanted to put down roots.  I saw an ad in the paper for an acreage selling on contract and contacted the owner......I was able to put down that money and purchase a stable home for my 3 young children where they could live and attend the same school until they graduated from high school.
Being active in medieval reenactment, I knew that manor houses often had names, and I liked the idea of naming my new little acreage to make it seem more permanent (and maybe a little grander!)  I spent a lot of time thinking of ideas and the two things that stuck out to me were that we were located within 8 acres of woods and there were thistles blooming everywhere.  Thistlewood Manor was born!
Here's a picture of the first Thistlewood Manor:
​

A few years ago my husband and I decided to sell this house and move on, so we bought a new acreage and once again named it Thistlewood Manor.  This is where I make all my soap now and sell it online, at events, and on the front porch.
​

 Everyone has heard of Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving when many businesses have big sales.  However, have you heard of Small Business Saturday?  That's the next day, when you are encouraged to shop small, locally owned businesses.  Many small businesses can't afford to sell our products at a big discount because they are made by hand, by us, in our spare time from other jobs.  However, if you buy from a small business you can expect good quality and good service because we put our names and faces on our businesses.

​Today, my husband and I visited C & M Acres Fiber Mill near Maxwell, IA ; which is only a few miles from us.  Their shop is open today till 3 and tomorrow 10-3.  As we drove up, all the alpacas stood in a line staring straight at us!  They have a nice little shop filled with yarn, blankets, rugs, roving and more.  It's fun to support a neighbor!

​Another small business I want to support is Dwarven Workshop.  They make wood boxes, cutting boards, combs, games and more.  Recently they also made some inkle looms for me to sell and they are excellent looms.

​I hope you enjoy your shopping and support small businesses too!