How Not To Make An Oil

Okay, so here's the reason you don't take your steeped herbal oil and let it sit on your dark kitchen counter for a couple of weeks before you decant it:

Since the mold didn't affect the oil except for on the top, I just scraped it off and strained the rest through cheesecloth (as usual), washed out the jar and put the "clean" oil back in there, to store in the fridge, possibly make a salve with beeswax someday, and use as needed.

This is calendula oil, good for lymphatic drainage, cat-scratch type wounds and muscle pain or wounds in areas with a lot of lymph nodes (i.e. the collarbone area). Read my post about it here. And Maude Grieve has a nice write-up on calendula here in her book A Complete Herbal on botanical.com . She calls it Marigold but it's different from the Marigold many of us are used to with the strong scent that repels bugs and bunnies from the garden.