Is it ever too early to start crafting for the Christmas season? Probably not, and with the holidays just behind us, Tatting & Design is offering a great giveaway that will help you carry a bit of the Christmas cheer into the new year!

This giveaway includes Lyn Morton’s beautiful, full-color Christmas Book (Book No. 7), a spool of Oren Bayan size 50 gold metallic tatting thread, and a pack of the iridescent beads she uses in the book. A £20 value! That’s about $31 US.

For all of you in the UK, check out their shop and find a new, local tatting supplier. For all of you elsewhere, they have very reasonable—and fast—international shipping rates, so check out their store and find a new long-distance tatting supplier. Mail order is mail order, after all, right?

Lyn and Mike generously sent me a set to try out and I have to say, I love this book. She makes good use of the space and color to present very clear instructions, both written and diagrammed. I love how each round is both written out and diagrammed separately to minimize confusion, with frequent close-ups of any small details or tricky bits.

The book includes 12 beautiful patterns that are arranged roughly in order of increasing difficulty, but never getting so difficult that a competent beginner would have much problem figuring them out. The designs are more elegant, than difficult.

All the designs do include beads, but those can easily be substituted with picots if you choose. If you want to use beads but haven’t tried it before, she has a page of instructions with clear pictures on the various ways to add beads. I found this helpful myself, as even though I have used beads on many occasions, I don’t use them often and so usually need a little refresher before I begin. Here’s the motif I made:

I missed a join so there are only five points instead of six, but I’m not about to take half the round out. Well, maybe next time I’ll get it right, and I kind of like the way it looks anyway.

These motifs don’t have to be made just for Christmas, either. Change out the colors and they’re beautiful motifs for any occasion.

The Oren Bayan metallic thread was also a pleasant surprise to use. I have avoided using metallics for years, and remember them being fiddly, coarse, breaking often and downright horrible, but this wasn’t that at all. Okay, so it was a bit coarser than regular thread and I had to pull out my finger guard to save my middle finger (don’t read into that), but it was not at all difficult to use. It never once broke and was not difficult to flip the stitches or pull through the stitches. In fact, I’m going to make another motif from this spool to embellish a thank-you card for a friend.

I highly recommend both Lyn Morton’s book and Oren Bayan thread. Head on over to Tatting & Design and pick up yours today.

So, how do you get your hands on this faabulous prize? Here are seven ways you can enter for a chance to win. Do one, many or all to increase your chances of winning.

Please leave a separate comment below for each entry to count. You must leave a valid email address so I can contact you if you win. It won’t be visible to anyone but me if you enter it into the comment form.

1. Visit Tatting & Design and browse their many selections. Leave a comment here about when you like to start your holiday tatting or crafting.

2. Tweet about this giveaway. Tweet every day for more chances to win. Feel free to copy and paste this tweet:

3. Tell your friends about this giveaway on your blog, forum, message boards, Facebook, Google+1, StumbleUpon, etc! Leave a separate comment here with a link for each way you share!

4. Place an order at Tatting & Design and leave a comment here with your order number.

5. Subscribe to Tatted Treasures RSS feed and get new posts sent automatically to your favorite RSS reader or email.

6. Follow Tatted Treasures on Twitter to get updates and news quickly.

7. Subscribe to Tatted Treasures by email. Sign up in the top right sidebar of this page. You’ll get new posts sent you you by email and can unsubscribe at any time.

This giveaway is open worldwide until Sunday, February 26th at midnight, MST. The lucky winner will be chosen by random.org and will be announced on Monday.

Good luck, and happy tatting!

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