In which the excitement mounts

The mystery shawl listserv is heating up...to the tune of thousands of participants and the resulting hundreds of emails a day (yipe!). Lots of folks have chosen Zephyr in the Ebony, Vanilla, and Pewter colorways; I haven't seen anyone else with the Charcoal. Marilyn's didn't have Pewter, just Steel and Charcoal, cool and warm; now I'm having a teensy bit of buyer's remorse. Is Pewter the color of my dreams? I really like the warm grey of the Charcoal, though, so I just need to stand strong. Now the question is: to bead, or not to bead?

I actually have some prepwork to do before I go off to my AP English training next week; choosing a variety of essays from the 19th and 20th centuries and deciding what knitting project(s) to bring to the hotel (a hotel! for 4 days! with only sporadic children! And a laptop!)--these are the kind of decisions I like to make.