What do you do when you are working on something, putting your heart into what you are making, and then, something goes wrong?

I was really sad and oh, so disappointed.  The hours I spent knitting and embroidering this sweater flashed through my mind as I looked at the stains that a new strand of beads had left behind around the buttonholes.  I tried dabbing the worst stain out with water, then tried a tiny bit of Shout, the one stain didn’t budge, so I didn’t even try with the others.

Well, how bad are the stains?  Not too bad, in my opinion, but the sweater is not perfect now.   😞  I know that I don’t have it in me to remake this sweater and the stains are very faint, so the sweater isn’t ruined.  I removed the offending beads and replaced them with glass beads.  If the sweater is buttoned, the stains are totally covered up.  And, (ha ha) unbuttoned in a darkened room they are unnoticeable.  Hey, I gotta laugh or I’d cry!

But seriously, see not too bad.

Here is the sweater with the new glass beads sewn on and the sweater buttoned up.

And, here is Talyssa during the photo shoot when everything was going perfectly, or so I thought.  I liked Gina’s “Ivy and Holly” ensemble so much that I decided to make Talyssa one of her own.

Now, for the learning part and in case you were wondering about these beads.  These beads were labeled as “Dyed Bamboo Coral”.  I wanted to better understand how this happened and how I could test beads , so I took the strand and rubbed it on an old wool sweater and sure enough there was a faint pink stain left on the wool.  Needless to say, I will be staying away from dyed beads.

Talyssa’s “Holiday Darling” ensemble is available (at a special price) on my “Shop What’s New” page at cindyricedesigns.com.