Osborn Fiber Studio

Happy Epiphany, dearest readers! I am concluding this Christmas series with Naomi’s gift #3, which has nothing to do with knitting (unless I knit her a bag to keep it in, which isn’t a bad idea). This is just pure happy-making.

Gift #2, by the way, was my old cell phone. She was pretty excited about it (especially when I charge it so she can turn it on), though of course she would vastly prefer my new cell phone.

One of Naomi’s idiosyncrasies is that she loves playing with wine corks. We don’t have wine very often, but sometimes we buy a bottle for our Sabbath dinner. We had collected three or four, and I had the idea that it would be fun to collect a whole bunch of them for her to play with. So I shot out an email to my student body, asking folks to bring in wine corks for Naomi’s Christmas present.

The response was amazing! This is why there are so many winey jokes about Anglicans!

I counted, and we were given about 177. So a little more than twelve dozen. (I had to send another campus-wide email saying, thank you but STOP!) When I counted them, I was thinking about gluing some of them together to make blocks. But I realized quickly that I couldn’t really do that effectively without a hot-glue gun. Still, I had to take pictures of them standing up, like a disorderly little mob waiting for Augustus to speak.

  

 

There was a little sub-culture of plastic corks…

And a stout representation of champagne corks.

They all got a bath in the sink before Christmas. But the bag they are kept in still smells pleasantly of wine.

When Naomi’s a little older, I might go back to the glueing-them-together-to-make-blocks plan. For now she doesn’t seem to appreciate the mass of them as such, except that when she drops or throws one, there’s always another ready to hand to suck on. Understandable, as she doesn’t really get the point of her other blocks yet. But still. Pretty cute.

The funnest thing we’ve discovered is what a great bath toy these make!

I promise, her look in the next picture is from being surprised by flash, and not from sucking on too much wine residue.

 

Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope your season was full of joy and quality time with people you love. Ours was silly and adventurous and adorable, with its ups and downs. The Epiphany season is an excellent excuse to leave our trees up ’till Lent starts, so keep celebrating.