Classes I’m developing: 1) Daily Life in Rome, and 2) a special thing for Yule – the history Christmas, starting with Saturnalia (the origin of many Christmas traditions), and then the Feast of the Unconquered Sun (Dec 25th), then handing it off to a medievalist.

I’m thinking hard about Kingdom Arts & Sciences 2016. I think I need to stick to a single entry, but the one I have in mind does encompass a few different skills. It’s a rag doll, with a hand spun/woven tunica, and possibly leather shoes, if I can figure out a way to make them historically accurate, yet work on blobby doll feet. The idea is to create a doll that Tullia would have made for her own kids or to distract the children of a patient as she’s practicing her midwifery.

I NEED to make some Roman shoes for Caius (he’s still wearing a broken pair of Jesus sandals). Of course I want more shoes too!

I want to continue research on the spintriae – those wonderful explicit coins that the public mistakenly thinks are brothel coins.

My long term project is my Roman garden. There will be a mosaic, of course. Caius is getting inspired with the plants – so far we plan on figs, lavender, rosemary, coriander, grapes, laurel, elderberry, St John’s wort, and salvia. The tricky part is going to be including Priapus (an essential figure in any Roman garden) in a way that won’t scandalize our modern 13 year old. I’m thinking we can stand him behind a big rosemary bush or something. 🙂

Unfortunately, life (finding a new office and moving my business, not to mention settling into the new house) has interfered with my A&S. Hopefully I can be more productive for the last quarter of 2015!