Disappointed

I have been crocheting snowflakes like a madwoman the last few weeks. I thought that, with the new house, it would be really pretty to do one tree all in a snowflake theme with white and iridescent ornaments.

Last night I finally sat down and started stiffening and blocking the two dozen plus snowflakes I had made. I spent HOURS hunched over the blocking boards with a pile of brand new stick pins, gunking up my hands with the stiffener and working my little butt off to get them all even and pretty.

The first thing I noticed is that working with thread and then blocking your projects really makes you notice if your tension isn't even. Then I noticed that on a few flakes I had made mistakes (forgetting stitches or adding them) that were VERY OBVIOUS once you started stretching those suckers out.

I faithfully sprinkled each and every flake with a fine dusting of super fine glitter (the expensive kind) to give them that extra "bling" factor in the tree lights and set the boards aside to dry overnight.

This morning, I was very eager to take my snowflakes off the boards and see how things turned out. It was my first time blocking a project, much less stiffening it, and I couldn't wait to see how they would look.

As I started pulling pins out, I noticed that ALMOST EVERY SINGLE ONE had rusted, leaving yellow and orange markings on my snowflakes. I am so bummed! I even bought brand new pins for this project to avoid any discoloration issues. I couldn't find stainless steel pins, but I figured that one or two uses on brand new pins would be okay.

Evidently I was wrong.

So, does anyone know where I could get stainless steel T-pins? I am still gonna use the stained ones this year (maybe I will cover up the worst of the stains with a little white fabric paint mixed with glitter or something), but I would like to avoid this mess in the future.

Bummer.