about beads

There are two skeins of Handmaiden Sea Silk in my stash that I purchased with the intention to knit a Clapotis for a coworker. But after knitting two Clapotis last year I thought it was time to look at a different shawl pattern. And that's when I saw this Pampas pattern. It's designed for the yarn I have and it's gorgeous. Perfect, right? Okay, it's beaded and I've never done that, but how hard can that be?

Yeah... about that... Once I purchased the pattern and read the material list I discovered that the shawl involves a lot of cabling left and right, and uses 5000 size 8 seed beads, each bead individually incorporated with a size 12 (0.6mm) crochet hook.

1. Where can I find that hook? 
2. How time-consuming is the beading? 
3. How irksome will it be to hook splitty silk yarn through a tiny bead hole?
4. Can I use the size 6 seed beads I already have or must I buy the size 8 beads?
5. How much weight will that many beads add to the shawl?
6. Is it worth the extra money for sparkling metallic gold-lined crystal beads?
7. Can I simultaneously juggle a cable needle, knitting needles, a crochet hook and some impossibly tiny beads while working with slippery, splitty silk yarn?
8. What's the likelihood of me abandoning this project in frustration?

Time to swatch with some leftover yarn from the last Clapotis that I knit. Swatching isn't something I do often, but in this case it was a very good idea ...

1. I tried four shops  - 2 yarn stores, 1 big-box craft store and a dollar store - but struck out on the hook. Jane lent me a size 11 in case that would be small enough for my swatch. (It was.) 
2. Incorporating beads was easy using the method described here as "Hooking Beads as You Go", but still time-consuming ... particularly as I seem prone to dropping beads.
3. The yarn is splitty but the holes in the beads are pretty big. This wasn't a problem.
4. You can see from my swatch that size 8 beads (on the left) are much smaller than size 6 beads (on the right). Substituting is really NOT feasible. The 8s are subtle; the 6s are like boulders.
5. Using the gram weight charts found here, 5000 size 8 seed beads would add about 5 oz to the shawl; 5000 size 6 seed beads would add about 15 oz!
6. Sparkling metallic beads are definitely worth the extra dough based on my swatch. My size 8 beads vanish into the knitting; if they were metallic they'd catch the light.
7. Can I juggle cabling, knitting and beading with this pattern and this yarn? Not very well.
8. Am I likely to give up in frustration? Yes. In fact I was too frustrated to even finish a single pattern repeat in the swatch so there's my answer.

Maybe one day in my retirement I'll give this pattern a go, but for now, I think I'll just pick another (simpler) pattern. Gail (aka Nightsongs) looks pretty!