Aeolian - bead troubles

I mentioned how I've been wanting to knit Aeolian since it appeared in Knitty this spring... but I've been too scared! Despite being quite a fearless knitter (the third jumper I ever made I invented the pattern as I went along... and I love it!), I haven't knitted a lot of lace - two forest canopy shawls, one with beads, one without (scroll down), plus half an abandoned Cleite which I really must grit my teeth and finish one day. The trouble is, and the reason Cleite is sulking in a drawer somewhere, I hate charts. I get lost, I read the wrong line, my eyes wander and I make mistakes. And then I throw the project in the corner and it gets lost in the mess. Have you seen the edging charts on Aeolian? Terrifying!!
Still, I love this pattern, and I saw such a gorgeous red one at Fibrefest that I just had to buy some yarn then and there (um, I have laceweight in the stash. Quite a lot of it, and much of it is blue. But that's not the point!) and give it a go. Yesterday I cast on. Then ripped out. Cast on, ripped out. Cast on, ripped out. It took me 5 attempts to even get the 13 stitches on the needle to start the set-up chart! This thing just wasn't going to roll over and play nicely. I abandoned the metal circs I had picked out, and went back to bamboo DPNs. Nice and grippy, make stupid stitches behave. By bedtime I had finished the set-up chart and went to sleep feeling triumphant. Hah! Let those sticks and string know who's boss! This morning I have even added one repeat of the Yukka chart without further mishap (yes, I know I am tempting fate!)

But this time, I'm going to win. I have my charts marked up and post-it notes to mark which line I'm on, so my eye can't wander and get confused. I have notes on the side to keep track of how many repeats I've done. (Not sure how many I'm doing yet, aiming for something between the Shoulderette and Shawl sizes). I have highlighters and coloured pencils at the ready. I'm prepared.

What you might not believe is how much trouble the beads on this shawl are giving me. I have lots of beads. Oooh, lots. Here is most of the blue/green seed bead section, just to give you an idea:

Yeah. Most of. Now would you believe that in that lot there weren't the right beads for Aeolian? Well, there weren't. There were some the right colour, but too small to fit on the crochet hook. (I'm using a 0.6 mm, the smallest I've ever seen) There were some big enough, but the wrong blue (this yarn is a petrol blue shade, quite unusual). There were even some that were a lovely blue and the right size, but not enough of them. The shawl verion of Aeolian takes over two thousand beads. 2,250 according to the pattern. I don't know how many I will need, as I'm doing something between the two sizes. But hey, I may need up to 2,250 beads. Time to go shopping (after I realised, during my traumatic cast-on attempts, that the beads are there right from row 1 - this thing has a lot of beads).
Three bead shops later, cursing the lovely petrol blue yarn and wondering why I'd started this, I found some beautiful beads.

They were exactly the right size, they were big enough to go over the hook, there were six packets there (plenty, I hoped) and to top it all, they were half price! These beads were meant for me. It was fate.

Um.... except that frosted beads in exactly the right shade of blue don't show up that well! This is a very close-up picture: from a foot away you can't tell there are beads there at all. Rats!! I am not going to spend hours beading a shawl with invisible beads! They don't even catch the light, they're frosted! (why this didn't occur to me in the shop, don't ask me. I may have been sale-blinded).

Fortunately, these were also half price, and I bought them just because I liked the colour. It's not a perfect match, but then they do actually show up, so that's a good thing! Now tell me, have I got all of the bad knitting karma out of the way for this shawl? Will it be easy from now on? Please? Pretty please?