I’ve been saving wine corks for as long as I can remember. I can’t bring myself to throw them away – the natural ones – because I just think they’re cool. I even find myself picking bottles of wine based on which ones have real corks vs. synthetic. There’s something tactile and visceral about them that totally intrigues me, from the smell of the wine-soaked end to the elastic resistance I feel when I roll them about with my fingers, to the almost limitless variation of patterns and colors. And I’m amazed by the fact that cork comes from trees and start out living and organic.