Make | I love my city tote bag

Make and decorate totes that celebrate what you love about where you live

You will need

For the bag:
38 x 46cm cotton twill (outer fabric) 
38 x 46cm cotton fabric (liner fabric)
1 spool thread, to match twill
2 pieces of cotton webbing (50 x 4cm), for tote handles
OR, a ready-made blank tote bag

For the decoration:
2 skeins embroidery floss
Size 4 embroidery needle
18cm wooden embroidery hoop (or smaller)
Scissors
Pencil and white eraser
Ruler and straight pins
Iron

Embroider your love letter:
1 Think of something that you love about where you live. Maybe it’s a flower seller or the view from the waterfront, a skyline, or a certain stretch of road.
2 Pre-wash and dry fabric.
3 In pencil, write the letter in the centre of the twill fabric, leaving at least 6cm at the top and at least 10cm at the bottom. If using an existing tote bag, centre text.
4 Using all six strands of embroidery floss, chain stitch around pencilled text. To chain stitch: make a small stitch on your fabric. Bring the needle back up through the fabric a short distance below your stitch. Loop your thread through the first stitch, pull through before re-inserting your needle into the same hole you came up through. Repeat, by passing the needle through the last loop you made.
5 Trim loose threads and iron out any crease marks from the hoop. If you’re using an existing tote, you’re done! If sewing your own tote bag, proceed to the next step.

Make your bag:
1 Start by making the lining: pin together two pieces of liner material with right sides facing. Using a sewing machine with a 1cm seam allowance, stitch along one side, turn onto bag bottom, and turn again, sewing up the other side.
2 Pinch corner and line up the side seams so that corner fabric makes a triangle. Measure 7.5cm from corner and draw a perpendicular line with pencil. Sew along that line, keeping side seams open. Complete both liner corners and cut off extra fabric. Keep tote inside out and pin 4cm seam from open edge of bag.
3 Then make the outer bag: pin together two pieces of twill with right sides facing. Using a sewing machine with a 1cm seam allowance, stitch both sides of the bag and the bottom.
4 Pinch corner and line up side seams so that the corner fabric makes a triangle. Measure 8cm from the corner and draw a perpendicular line with pencil. Sew along that line, keeping the side seams open. Complete both corners and cut off any extra fabric.
5 Flip fabric right-side out and pin a 4cm seam from the open edge of bag.
6 Slide lining inside outer shell and pin corners together. Pin handle fabric to twill 10cm from the edge of the bag, with 10cm between each end of the handles. Pin outer fabric to inner fabric. Be careful to tuck handle tops down into bag. Sew through all layers at the top of the bag, keeping the handles sandwiched between the lining and the outside twill. Trim any loose threads to neaten it up.

Project by Lindsay Zier-Vogel, reprinted with permission from Strange Material: Storytelling through Textiles edited by Leanne Prain (Arsenal Pulp Press).

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Nasturtiums

Nasturtiums are plants that just keep giving

From the moment they are planted in spring, they respond to the smallest amount of care (a bit of earth, occasional watering) with vigorous growth, lily-pad-shaped leaves and then, around about now, cheery and abundant blooms. Not only do the flowers look good in the garden as they scramble and tumble about, but they make a pretty, peppery addition to salads, and they can be brought indoors for an instant bit of summery colour. 

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Play time

There’s fun to be found in the everyday if you look for it

Listen to a funny podcast on your commute or play your favourite music while washing up

Be open to meeting new people. We tend to stick close to those we know, which is often to our disadvantage

Be curious – take up drawing, dancing, growing, anything that expresses your curiosity in a way that’s fun

Mix with happy people and benefit from what experts call ‘emotional contagion’

Act spontaneously - take a day off, do something unexpected, surprise yourself…

What would you add? And have you seen our could-do lists?

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Wisdom: Nell Gifford of Gifford's Circus

Meet Nell Gifford, founder of Gifford's Circus - the nation's most glamorous troupe. Nell's lifetime of learning - from recruiting clowns to dog training to facefuls of custard - has built the travelling show of her dreams

In the fifteen years since Nell Gifford and her husband Toti launched their travelling show out of a bevy of painted vintage wagons that tour the south west each summer, Nell has dazzled in scarlet and gold Ring Master's garb; set hearts racing astride rearing ponies; and left children crying with laughter as another custard pie splats in her face. 

Their new permanent base at Fennels Farm where Nell and Toti live with their seven-year-old twins, son Cecil and daughter Red, is being refurbished to accommodate their burgeoning troupe of 50 clowns, jugglers, acrobats, contortionists and musicians, not to mention the 100 animals already in situ, which include horses, ponies, dogs, chickens, doves and a goose called Brian. 

'Every year feels like the last,' she says, after describing the 16-hour days, non-stop questions and continual trouble-shooting that tis the pre-season lot of a circus boss. 'It's a nightmare, but once you get the bug, you can't live without it.'

Image: Lottie Storey

Nell is not what you might expect from someone who runs a circus. Her voice is low and measured, and she has an air of self-containment that seems at odds with the abundance and jollity of her chosen career. As a girl, she never dreamed of running a circus, or even running away to one, although in her 'threadbare and bohemian' childhood, she did once want to be a monkey trainer, and her favourite game involved gypsies and pretending to live in a caravan. 'Be careful what you wish for,' she says. But this isn't a story of the girl who never grew up. Perhaps rather the girl who was forced to grow up too quickly, when in 1991 catastrophe struck, and a riding accident left her mother Charlotte severely brain damaged. 'When your mum is put in to hospital for life, your home life is over in a day,' says Nell, who has a sister Clover, two years her junior, and two older siblings from her mother's previous marriage, Tom and Emma Bridgewater, the ceramics designer. 'I was 18, not 12, but it was abrupt. The house was sold, I packed up our home, put away my childhood; everything was dissipated.'

So Nell ran away with the circus. Or rather she was offered the chance to spend a year working at a circus in America that was owned by Tom's wife's family. 'I fell in love with the whole way of life,' she says, 'with the animals and the children, and the multilingual travelling village feel. I was more helped than helpful, but i knew that this was what I wanted to do with my life, nothing else was a possibility.'

Image: Lottie Storey

Back in the UK, she took up a place at New College Oxford to read English, and on graduating, started her career selling ice cream for the Chinese State Circus. Over the next few years she worked her way around the industry, putting up tents and driving lorries, donning fishnets and riding elephants. In 1998, Nell met Toti who ran his own landscape contracting business in Cheltenham, they became engaged, and he followed her to Germany for a season at Circus Roncalli, where Nell worked as an assistant horse trainer and groom. It was here that their eyes were opened to what a circus could really be. 'All the English circuses were very unloved,' says Nell. 'Circus Roncalli was like a fantasy baroque travelling circus. It was absolutely beautiful, with twinkling lights, cinnamon cakes, beer and champagne. There was such a sense of occasion when it arrived in town. It showed me how culturally relevant circuses could be.'

In 1999, Nell and Toti, by now married, bought a second-hand tent through a newspaper and an old showman's wagon from a farmer, and began building their vision of the perfect circus, nail by nail. 'We wanted to create a jewel of a show on a village green, that was rowdy and handmade, with horses and a gas-lit feel,' says Nell. 'My mum's old curtains got cut up and made into costumes, we sewed sequins on to old riding clothes.' They held auditions at the Playhouse Theatre in Cheltenham, and hired 20 artists including a local juggler and a contortionist from Birmingham. Money from Toti's landscaping business was ploughed into the circus, they very nearly went bankrupt, and were forced to move into the old showman's wagon, in which they lived until 2005. 'It wasn't the easiest way to start a marriage, without a loo or a shower. It was non-stop hard work and it still is. But we never doubted it would be a success.' When Gifford's Circus launched at the Hay Festival in 2000, their faith and hard work was rewarded with a clamour of positive media coverage, and a sell-out first season.

Image: Lottie Storey

The circus may be a success, but there is a difference between successful and financially stable, says Nell: 'It's taken a long time to make it even slightly secure. It's not the cleverest thing to make something successful but not well off, because you are constantly trying to make things the best without a lot of money.' But year after year Gifford's Circus's old-fashioned and topsy turvy charm has continued to delight thousands of guests, with the help some of the best names in theatre creation including Angela de Castro and River Dance's Molly Molloy. IN 2002, good food was added to the line up with the opening of their mobile restaurant Circus Sauce, which offers a local and sometimes foraged menu, served at candlelit oak tables on Emma Bridgewater Pottery - Nell's sister also designs a range for the Gifford's Circus shop. 

Today the constant challenge of balancing work and private life has been eased by the ability to hire more staff and delegate. If Nell is able to do a spot of gardening during rehearsals, she feels that she has cracked the system. The arrival of Red and Cecil in 2010 saw the twins seamlessly immersed in circus life. 'They just know the world of shows. It's a family business,' says Nell, who nevertheless only wants her children to continue with the circus if it is something they feel passionate about and can do well. But the twins certainly like to perform, and appear in the ring for finales whenever they feel like it, sometimes, Nell suspects, simply as an excuse to get out of bedtime.

'I think Red thinks she is in charge of the circus, whereas Cecil thinks mending lorries is more his department,' she smiles. This arrangement is not dissimilar from her own and Toti's division of labour; Nell is in charge of the overall steering of the business, the scheduling and the press, as well as turning her hand to a bit of animal training, most recently dogs; while Toti is in charge of logistics, the tent and the lorry.

Image: Lottie Storey

Winters are spent at the farm planning the next season, but there is little time off - work on next year starts the moment the tent comes down. But once spring arrives and the weather turns, they are keen to get back on the road. Nell describes the beginning of the season as a bit like a family wedding, 'There are lots of hellos and excitement at who's new and what's happening, but then it settles down and by the end everyone's quite pleased it's over. Some people are sick of each other, some are in love - we've had quite a few people meet and have children over the years.'

While Nell thrives on those days when a performance is 'packed and safe and rocking', it's an exhausting and stressful time, when she's constantly in uncomfortable costumes, and on high alert, unable to unwind. So when the road isn't calling, quiet time at home with Toti and the twins, playing puzzles, is how she switches off. Nell also finds time to learn something new each week, and at the moment takes sewing, fitness and riding lessons. 'I think it's really important to be taught something. It changes the dynamic from always telling people what to do, otherwise my automatic response is to become bossy, and I hate that.'

Setting up a circus may seem an improbably dream to most, but for Nell it has restored her faith in life: 'I think life is a question of what you want to do, not what you can do,' she says. 'Things just went so wrong with mum, that it's only in the last year with the move to this area and the farm that I definitely...' she tails off. 'It's like riches to rags to riches again,' she says. 'I just wake up every morning and think, 'what went right?'

This year's Any Port in a Storm runs until 24 September 2017. For tickets and venue information go to giffordscircus.com.

Not heard of Gifford's Circus? Allow us to introduce you...

Giffords Circus By Ellen Von Unwerth from nathan guillaumey on Vimeo.

This interview was first published in the April 2015 issue of The Simple Things - shop back issues

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From the August issue:

Recipe | Lavender and honey cakes

August is a quiet season for baking... Let these light and pretty lavender numbers tempt you back into the kitchen

LAVENDER AND HONEY CAKES
Makes 12

40g salted butter (room temperature) 
120g plain flour
140g caster sugar
11⁄2 tsp baking powder
120ml milk
1 egg
1 tsp lavender essence

for the icing
80g unsalted butter (room temperature)
160g icing sugar
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp lavender essence
Purple food colouring
Dried lavender to decorate (optional) 

you will need
12-hole cupcake or muffin tin lined with 12 paper cases

1 Preheat oven to 170C/Fan 150C/325F. Measure the butter, flour, caster sugar and baking powder into a bowl and use an electric whisk to beat until the butter is incorporated and you have a sand-like texture.

2 In a separate bowl, mix the milk, egg and lavender essence and add slowly to the dry mixture, mixing to form a batter.

3 Pour the batter into the cupcake cases, about a heaped tablespoon in each, and bake in the centre of the oven for 15 mins or until lightly golden and springy to touch. Remove from the oven and allow to rest for 5 mins, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

4 To make the icing, whisk together the butter, icing sugar, honey and lavender essence for a couple of mins until smooth. Add as much purple food colouring as you like, then put in the fridge for 15–20 mins until firm.

5 Ice the cakes using the back of a spoon and garnish with a sprig of dried lavender.

Recipe from Milly’s Real Food by Nicola Millbank (HarperCollins).

Cake in the House is our monthly recipe feature - get a cake recipe every month in The Simple Things!

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Escape | A Welsh eco retreat with room to roam

See, do, stay, love the UK. This month: Nina Nixon heads to Wales for a weekend retreat 

Our regular travel series comes from online UK travel guide This is Your Kingdom, whose handpicked contributors explore favourite places, special finds and great goings on.

You can read about one we love each month in The Simple Things – turn to page 76 of the August issue for more of this outdoors adventure – and plenty of others at thisisyourkingdom.co.uk.

Nina Nixon is a contributor to thisisyourkingdom.co.uk. She has a passion for photography, capturing moods and making memories. More of Nina’s work can be found on her blog ninanixon.co.uk and on Instagram @nina_nixon

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How to build a swing

Branch out with this playful addition to a garden

You will need:
Wood that’s at least 2.5cm thick, avoid pine and damaged wood
Poly twist rope
Handsaw
Sandpaper
Drill

1 Find a thick, living branch, parallel to the ground.
2 Cut your board to measure 45 x 25cm and sandpaper it.
3 Drill four holes a little bigger than your rope width in each corner of the wood, 2.5cm in.
4 Cut rope into two lengths twice the height of the swing plus 3.5 m.
5 Take a piece of rope and double it over so cut ends are together.
6 Holding the looped end, place rope over branch and then thread the two cut ends to secure the loop against the tree branch. Repeat with the second bit of rope – the same distance apart as the holes on the seat.
7 Thread lengths through the four holes and adjust for height.
8 Tie each length in a figure eight stopper knot under the swing.

More practical and playful suggestions in Miscellany, every month in The Simple Things!

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A smooth sea never made a skilful sailor

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Living | How to camp well

Swap bricks for canvas, early mornings, outdoor life. Body clock reset

Jonathan Cherry shares the details that take camping trips from good to great

FLOWERS FOR THE TABLE
One of the first things Gemma does on arrival at any campsite is set off with the kids to forage wild blooms for the table – picked responsibly, of course – leaving the adults to pitch the tents in peace. Display in a recently finished beverage bottle of your choice.

KUBB (VIKING CHESS)
With a handy carry bag, this game travels everywhere with us from the garden to the beach. Great as a family game with the kids but even better played late in the evening with a beer in hand. Just mind your shins!

HERBS & SPICES
Bex advises taking a ‘store cupboard’ supply of your most used herbs and spices – it’ll save your kitchen being overrun with duplicates on your return and means campfire dishes can be as flavourful away as they would be at home. Her favourites are ground cumin, ground coriander, smoked paprika, herbes de Provence and baharat.

FIREWOK
Matt couldn’t survive a camping trip without the Firewok. Hand crafted by a small business in Bristol, this is our favourite portable fire pit and comes with great cooking accessories (firewok.co.uk).

TINDER
Logs and kindling are readily available at most campsites but we always take our own tinder to ensure dinner happens! For every camping trip, Matt brings a mason jar of cotton wool balls and tumble dryer lint which he collects over the winter – free and a great fire starter.

SWEDISH LOG CANDLE
This is a self-feeding camp fire made from one log. Cross-cut 3⁄4 of the way down and stuff the top 15–20cm with tinder and kindling. Set a small fire on top of the log. Thin sections of the log at the top will start burning, sucking air down and drawing fire into the heart of the log. At this stage, it is possible to boil a kettle or cook on top of the candle.

SOUVENIR HAIKUS
You don’t need to write a diary of your trip in haikus to camp well, but if you fancy writing one or two like Matt’s on these pages (@Matt_633)... A traditional Japanese haiku is a three-line poem of 17 syllables, broken up into 5/7/5. They often focus on nature, and in character are simple and direct.

For example...
How to write haiku:
Count syllables, be direct
Focus on nature

Turn to page 38 of August's The Simple Things for more of our camping special.

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Recipe | Tropical lime granita

The sharpness of the lime granita is a treat when balanced with lovely sweet fruit. Tastes of tropical beaches

Makes 700ml (6–8 servings)

180ml caster sugar
A pinch of coarse sea salt
4 kaffir lime leaves, torn to release their flavour
1 stick of lemongrass, bruised
150ml soda water
350ml lime juice (1 lime usually yields 20–25ml)
1⁄2 small pineapple (about 150g), peeled and roughly diced*
100ml coconut cream, to serve

1 In a large saucepan, heat 180ml water, the caster sugar, a pinch of salt, the lime leaves and lemongrass until the sugar has dissolved and the flavours have fused together; this should take 8–10 mins on a medium heat. Discard the lime leaves and lemongrass.

2 Add the soda water and lime juice to the pan and stir gently (try not to stir all the bubbles out of the soda water). Pour into a freezer-proof container with a lid and freeze. Take out every hour and, using a fork, scrape the granita so that you end up with fluffy ice, rather than one big block. It should take about four hours to freeze.

3 To serve, put a generous portion of pineapple in a bowl, top with a scoop of granita and pour over a little coconut cream. Sprinkle with a small pinch of sea salt.

* This works well with any fresh fruit but if you find yourself near an Asian supermarket, stock up on rambutan, lychee or mangoes.

Recipe from Cook Thai by Sebby Holmes (Kyle Books). 

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A could-do list for August

Things you might want to do this month (no pressure!)

• Get up early and embrace the quiet
• Paint your toenails pink
• Paddle in a stream
• Read a book in a hammock
• Cook and eat outside as often as you can
• Leave the housework for another day
• Remember the times you laughed so much your belly hurt and to do those things more often

What would you add? Come over and tell us on Facebook or Twitter. 

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Make | Natural food colouring

There’s no need to rely on artificial food colourings when most colours can be created with natural ingredients found in your kitchen. Add a teaspoon at a time, increasing gradually for a more intense colour

Pink
125g pack of cooked beetroot
2 tsp juice from the pack
Blitz the beetroot and juice in a food processor until smooth. Strain if desired. Store in an airtight contained for up to two weeks in the fridge.

Purple
70g blueberries
4tsp water
Blitz the berries and water in a food processor until smooth. Strain through a superfine mesh sieve to separate solids. Store in a jar for up to a month.

Green
60g spinach
Enough water to cover it
Cover spinach in water and boil for 5 mins. Strain and discard liquid. Blitz spinach and6tbsp water in a food processor. Add more water if needed. Strain through a fine sieve, cool and store in a jar for up to a month.

Yellow
120ml water
1⁄2 tsp turmeric
Put water and turmeric in a small pan and heat for 5 mins. Allow to cool and store in an jar in the fridge up to a month.

Red
80g raspberries
4 tsp water
Blitz berries and water in a food processor until smooth. Strain to remove seeds. Store in a jar for up to two weeks in the fridge.

From The Art of the Natural Home by Rebecca Sullivan (Kyle Books).

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Mindfulness | Colour therapy

There could be thousands more colours than your standard rainbow seven, if you take a moment to consider how you might name them.

Anyone who’s ever had to choose a paint for a wall or a piece of furniture will have found themselves immersed in colour charts and sampler pots where there’s more to colour than their product codes or Pantone reference. Every shade, tone, and hue comes with its own name– chocolate comtesse, mineral grey, crushed oregano, millennial pink. In a description of just two or three words, a whole world can be conjured up or reimagined.

But what about all those colours yet to be given names? What would you call the blue the sky turns 20 minutes after a summer sunset, for example? Or the particular grey the clouds look when half the sky’s about to storm and the rest is brilliant sunshine? How should you describe the colour of your mother’s eyes, or define the shade you like your tea? Don’t let the paint companies have all the fun. It’s a mindful practice to look carefully at the colours around you and really see them.

ART PROJECT

Start a colour experiment to recreate colours you love in paint in a journal, logging what you mixed and in what proportions, and then name your colours however you like – striplight yellow, garden shed brick, bank holiday traffic. Baby’s comfort blanket, granny’s dining table, mum’s golden flecks. Colour can capture moments, memories and places as well as words or pictures.

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How to improve your frisbee

Give these techniques a spin to improve your summer sporting chances

There are more than 100 possible frisbee throws (see YouTube to learn a few more), so a few sessions in the park will not a pro make. These tips, however, will teach old dogs and humans alike a few new tricks.

Master your spins

Bend your wrist, then snap it quickly to give lots of spin. The more spin, the more stable it will be and the more control you’ll have on its flight.

Elbows out

Bend your elbow during your throw to add power and increase accuracy.

Do the twist

When throwing, step towards your target, or at least shift your weight from your back foot to the front foot. Twist your shoulder, hips and legs through to the point of release.

Strong and stable

Stable throws are more accurate throws. Aim to keep the frisbee level and throw from just above your belly button for optimum stability.

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Play | August cover reveal

Remember the excitement of the summer holidays when you were a child? It wasn’t so much where you were going but the fun you were anticipating having. That ‘school’s out’ urge is too feelgood to be just for kids. And the beauty is that you can capture it anywhere; a backyard party, ball games in the park, silly stories around the campfire, enjoying a poptail or making something funny. There’s a creativity that springs from messy play; think of it as your sunshine time. 

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