I use my hands a lot for making things, cooking, and gardening, so they tend to get quite rough especially in autumn and winter. I often have little cuts here and there, and once the skin around my fingertips starts cracking in winter, it takes forever to heal 🥲
I tried applying shea butter after hand cream and various other things, but the dryness and small wounds kept getting better and worse again. I love my big maker hands so I really wanted to take better care of them.
While struggling with hand care, I remembered making calendula ointment during an online workshop with Tia, a gardener in New Zealand, during the pandemic.
So I decided to make it again. I started looking for the same organic dried calendula flowers sold as herbal tea that I had used back then, but I couldn’t find them anymore. When I was travelling in the Czech Republic, I stopped by a shop run by the Austrian herb and spice company Sonnentor and asked about them. They told me, “Sorry there wasn’t enough demand and we don't have it.”
I did find some dried calendula online, but I wasn’t quite sure about the quality or how it had been stored, so I decided not to buy it.
Then I thought I’ll grow it myself. I bought seeds, raised seedlings and planted them in my garden. But this is my second year with the garden, and many areas are still in the process of soil improvement, it seemed I won't have enough flowers.
But something interesting happened. this summer, I stayed in Seiffen for an artist residency and one corner of my host’s garden was a beautiful flower garden — full of calendula.
I asked if I could pick some, and they kindly said yes. So I harvested the calendula flowers and started drying them in a corner of the workshop. After about two weeks, they were completely dry. I removed the petals, brought them home and soaked them in oil.
I left the calendula to infuse in the oil for about a month. Then I strained it once through a sieve and again through a coffee filter. Oil is easier to apply to small cuts or minor burns, so I kept some of it as oil rather than turning everything into ointment.
For the ointment, I gently heated the calendula oil together with beeswax in a water bath. Once the beeswax had melted, I poured the mixture into a small jar. In the Tia’s workshop, I had learned to add a few drops of essential oil at this stage but I completely forgot even though I had specifically bought essential oil and had it ready 💦
Once the ointment cooled and solidified in the jar, it was finished. I also learned in the workshop to decorate the jars with dried flowers.
I have another batch of calendula petals infusing in a different oil now, so next month I’ll make another batch of ointment — and hopefully remember the essential oil the next time.
I brought home some seeds from my host’s flower garden as a little memory of Seiffen. Next year, I’d love to sow them in my own garden, create a small calendula patch, and eventually make ointment from flowers grown entirely in my garden.
What started simply because of my rough hands ended up taking much longer than I expected. But through all these little connections, I ended up with an ointment that feels rather special and heartwarming. I’m very happy with it.
I think I’m ready to get through this autumn and winter with my calendula ointment by my side.
And now I’m already thinking about next year: perhaps I could grow calendula in the gardens of maker spaces too, and make a kind of “Maker’s Ointment” for hardworking maker hands…!
冬の手荒れにはじまって、ひさしぶりにカレンデュラのを思い立ち、紆余曲折の末、完成しました。その顛末を日本語ではnoteに書きましたのでよかったら覗いてみてください😊
