Beaded Lily of the Valley?

I haven't been knitting on my shawl at all lately because I have this nagging thought at the back of my head that I should replace the nupps with beads. I've looked all over google, ravelry, and flickr but haven't found anyone else who has recorded this change in their pattern so I've been nervous to make the switch. Until today. I decided that I can't knit the shawl up and wear it for the wedding if I'm going to keep having these nagging thoughts. I went to Joann's today with high hopes of finding some suitable beads. I'm not sure where these thoughts came from because when I got there they had a very limited selection and almost nothing that would match the shawl. I am still beadless and trying to plan a trip to a bead store some time soon (read: this weekend) so that I can put this nagging feeling to rest.

I'm hesitant to buy the beads online because I know absolutely nothing about bead sizing and what it means in relation to yarn. I plan on crocheting the beads onto the garment and this doubles the size of the yarn coming through the hole. Does anybody have any suggestions? I'm working with Bambu-7 yarn on size 7 needles.

I was having a lot of trouble with the saxon braid that runs through the middle of the green afghan I'm working on. I was trying to interpret all the written descriptions of the stitches into a chart but that just wasn't happening. Then, I found that Eunny had used this exact braid in a cable tutorial! The afghan is moving along smoothly now, I've got a full repeat done:


This year my sister and I decided to try something new for christmas gifts. She picked out some yarn that she liked and a hat pattern, then bought enough yarn for the hat and a scarf and gave it to me. The plan is to have a finished set of a hat and a scarf to give to her for Christmas... so far the yarn has not gotten to her house... I'm really starting to feel the crunch. I was planning on using those two projects as 'commute and at work' knitting because of their apparent portability. The other day I was thinking that I really could use a scarf because I have yet to knit one for myself. I dug through my stash and found two mismatched balls of brown yarn and thought that they were close enough to create some subtle striping in a scarf.

I've reserved this project for only while I'm away from home and just got started on it on Sunday night, this is what I have to show for it:
Probably around 6 or 7 inches.... just something to keep my hands busy at work while waiting for a procedure to finish.

This last Saturday Michael and I had plans with another couple to go up the mountain and bring home our first Christmas tree... We were all ready to go at 8 am and piled in the car with our blankets and layers and knitting... Driving down the road, we maxed at 20mph because the world decided to become one solid sheet of ice overnight. Within two blocks of our starting point we had seen 2 accidents involving at least 5 cars and they weren't just little fender benders. We are talking full on body repair work because the drivers didn't understand the severity of the ice. Needless to say, we did not continue our trek up the mountain and succumbed to buying our tree from a roadside lot.. Not that exciting but it sure is nice to have a fresh tree this year

*Please remember that you can always click on the image to see a bigger, clearer version!