Booky Giveaway! Hurrah!

Woah, it’s cold. Like, wearing-woolly-hats-inside-the-house-all-day cold. The Stoic Spouse is sporting headgear that makes him look like a burglar, but he refuses to be photographed for the blog.

Anyway, who’s in the mood for a giveaway to brighten up a dull grey-brown day? Do I see a hand raised at the back, there? (It’s hard to tell through all this mist and drizzle.) Yes? So let me tell you about a children’s book that’s just this minute been published by Bloomsbury. Look! It’s called Stanley The Amazing Knitting Cat, and it’s by Emily MacKenzie.

Now Stanley is an unusual cat. He’s nothing like your cat who claws your qiviut shawl and hides your merino behind the fridge. No, Stanley has overcome his lack of opposable thumbs in order to become a knitter.

Fortunately he has many animal friends to whom he gives his completed hats and scarves and tail-warmers.

As well as reading about Stanley, you can knit Stanley, or a rather splendidly cool Stanley hat. The patterns are right HERE. But back to the book. I won’t spoil the story by revealing what happens to Stanley, but suffice to say that he faces his biggest knitting challenge yet, and it’s going to take all of his yarny resources to succeed.

In the interests of science, I road-tested this book with the twinnage (aged five). These boys do not do tact, so I’m fairly sure that we can trust the genuineness of their responses. They were both enchanted by the tale, and having spent most of their lives surrounded by knitting, they especially loved the images of tangled yarn. Not that they’ve ever had to witness their mother cursing a stubbornly knotted ball of fluff, oh no… The twinnage are probably towards the upper end of the age spectrum that will appreciate this book, so I’d estimate its appeal as from roughly 2-6 years old. The illustrations are witty and original and cheerfully colourful.

Information about the book can be found on the Bloomsbury site HERE.

So let’s skip to the giveaway, shall we?

C’mon, even if you haven’t got children, you must know some children, yes? Don’t you think that they’d rather like this story?

Here’s the deal. (It’s a good’un.) Bloomsbury is kindly offering FIVE lucky readers of this blog from anywhere in the world the chance to win a copy of Stanley The Amazing Knitting Cat. To enter, leave a comment at the bottom of this post. To gain an additional entry, hop, skip and jump over to TheTwistedYarn’s Facebook page, make sure that you’ve ‘liked’ the overall page, and leave a comment on the relevant post there (including some means of contacting you, e.g. Ravelry name or email address). Feel free to share details of this giveaway with friends on social media: the more, the merrier!

The competition is open from now until 12.00 midday GMT on Friday 5th February, and is open worldwide. The five winners will then be chosen using an online random number generator, and asked to provide their postal addresses so that the prizes can be sent out. The prizes will be sent directly by Bloomsbury, so I will pass the winners’ details on to them so that this can occur. All OK?

Oh, and only one prize per winner. So if anyone wins via Facebook AND this blog post, only one prize will be sent to that person, and another winner will be randomly selected.

Best o’luck to you, and if you’re not one of the winners, you can always buy a copy from your friendly neighbourhood bookshop, or of course from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.